For reasons that are now largely lost to me, but which apparently have something to do with an episode of Scrubs, it has long been an ambition of Andrew’s to own a “Onesie” to wear about the house. You know the things, they’re basically a pair of pyjamas which are all one piece. Odd rural male characters in old kid’s movies (The Fox & The Hound, maybe?) used to wear red ones with a button-up flap on the back, possibly as underwear. You probably had one in your youth with built-in feet of dubious grip, and pockets, and usually a teddy bear on the left breast.
Well, since Andrew is essentially my best-friend-in-law, and since he is as hard to buy gifts for as all the other boys on the planet (Seriously, why are boys so difficult to buy gifts for? I wish they would just take to wearing earrings, like girls. Not for aesthetic reasons, obviously, because I’m pretty sure it’d look terrible, but at least you’d have a default gift, y’know?), and since I’ve recently taken to doing craft projects to keep me warm while we watch TV of an evening, I figured that this birthday it was time to do something about it.
Finding a pattern was rather more difficult than you might imagine, since the market for adult onesies is limited to say the least, but eventually a pattern was located in the “girls’ nightwear” section of a pattern book in the Spotlight in Penrith. It was decided that a car theme would be ideal, given that Andrew is maybe even more of a Top Gear and Really Fast Car fan than most of his demographic, and miraculously, an absolutely perfect fabric was there; flannelette with cars and racing flags and “Champion” signs all over it, all in the compulsory white-and-primary-colours scheme necessary for such a garment.
Over the next few weeks, during Foyle’s War, a complete series of Doctor Who, and a season and a half of Twin Peaks (due to Flatmate-Thesis, Reality TV, and weird reception such that our TV picks up Prime and Win rather than the usual channels 7 and 9, we mainly watch TV-on-DVD in short crazes in our house) it was cut out, dithered over, and sewn. I’m too lazy to go to the barely perceptible effort of setting up the sewing machine and dedicating the actual time to making things, so it was all hand sewn on the sofa, which may mean that it falls apart on the first wash, but by then it will have served its gift-purpose.
In terms of wrapping, since I got efficient and cleaned my room last week, turning up, amongst a quantity of other junk, a largeish shoebox, it was decided that in order to explain the weird choice of fabric, the box would be coated in pictures from a Top Gear magazine, which turned out to work brilliantly.
Last year, I’d taken it into my head to make him a beanie which looked like a MarioKart chain-chomp, which didn’t actually fit, which was a bit anxiety-provoking for this year, but not only did it fit, Andrew tried it on at his birthday party and didn’t take it off until after the end of his birthday party, which was fantastic.
So, verbiage aside, here’s what we’ve got.
The box, fabric, and the tools of production:
A better view of the box, on our awful carpet:
The fabric itself, with the pocket turned out (I failed to take any pictures which have the collar, cuffs, pockets and soles of feet all in them, but they’re all in this stars-and-stripes fabric, with the stars made grippy with clear fabric paint on the soles):
Andrew in suit:
And a risqué close-up of the back-panel (which I’d had to draft, since obviously the people who designed the pattern where making a slightly less ridiculous garment) – note the great buttons we found, the same colour scheme as the cars on the suit cloth.
Anyway, you guys, long story short, it was basically the most satisfyingly successful thing ever, and was ridiculously awesome.
1 comment:
Argh! Risque pictures of Andrew on the internet!
*sigh* I suppose it was bound to happen eventually.
Post a Comment