Vince's needlework and occasional drawings

Nope, it's a hollow plastic mannequin hand!

I rescued it from the garbage at work, and I've been meaning to glue the finger back on and repaint it, but haven't yet.

One fun thing about it being broken is that you can blow across the hole (like a bottle) and it makes a sound.

Not to be confused with the intact hands of Mr. Fibreglass, who is also a mannequin I got from work when they replaced them all a couple years ago.

Made another petticoat for Mr. Fibreglass out of a big piece of olive green fabric I found at the thrift store. It's polyester, but he has no sweat glands so he doesn't mind. It's very swishy, unlike the silk dupioni one over top of it, but sadly didn't really cause a discernible increase in skirt volume. I suppose he needs another one in a bulkier material.

I brought this project to work so I'd have something to do on slow days when I finish early, and I finished all the inside edges on the industrial serger there. The fabric was 3 and a half metres and I cut 2 long strips off one edge for the ruffle, and the rest of it into 2 large rectangles for the front and back. The waist ties are cotton twill tape and I just pleated the selvedge to them and machine sewed them down. I don't know why I made the pleats so small, and therefore much more time consuming than they needed to be.

I tried using a narrow hemmer foot for the hem. Since the fabric is so slippery and I haven't had much practice yet with hemmer feet, it came out kind of bad in quite a few places, but that's ok on a polyester undergarment for a mannequin.

Nah, I have no inclination to name anything without a face. I will think of a first name for Mr. Fibreglass after I get around to repairing his arm and repainting him, but I don't think he counts as a tool, being a display mannequin who's no use for draping.

I've never thought at all about naming any of my tools or machines, but the one exception is that I think it would be really funny to name a boiler iron Louis-Léopold.

(Image source)

(Yeah yeah I know it's not pronounced the same, but it would still be funny!)

I started this petticoat sometime in 2013 and it's been on The Pile ever since. I had thought I might cut it up to use the fabric for something else, even though I was unlikely to have a use for washed dupioni, but then I realized I could put it on Mr. Fibreglass! So I dug it out and took it to my alterations job to work on during slow days, and yesterday I finally finished it!

I had barely started sewing it up back in 2013, and the thread didn't match and the seam allowances weren't finished, so I picked apart what I'd done and serged the edges on the industrial at work. I vaguely remember getting the silk dupioni on clearance sale, and it must have been pretty darn cheap because there's about 4 metres of fabric in this thing. I forgot to measure it and count the scallops, but however many scallops there are it's a few too many and they took quite a long time to sew. I don't know why I thought that many opposing curves was a good idea, but they do look nice!

It's mostly machine sewn, aside from the waistband finishing and the ends of the ties. He could definitely use another petticoat or two under there to give it more floof and show off the scallops better, but that's not a priority at all, especially since he lives in a somewhat cluttered corner. (Clutter removed for these photos but it's back there now.)

Now that there's a bit of colour in Mr. Fibreglass's outfit, he reminds me of @breebird33's work.

Thank you!

It was 8 or 9 years ago so I don't remember it super well, but it's mostly cardboard and papier mâché. I built the base using cardboard boxes and a lot of masking tape, and you can still see some of the tape and cardboard inside the snout.

I made the horns by cutting 2 identical spiral shapes out of cardboard, and stretching them like a slinky, which is a much easier way to get them to spiral and be symmetrical than starting out with a straight thing and curving it. I'm pretty sure I bulked them up and got them to stay in that shape by taping lots of wads of crumpled up newspaper to the sides.

I covered the whole thing in layers of very cheap paper towel and Elmer's art paste, and used that to add a few little ridges and such.

The texture on the horns was made by just wrapping one long continuous strip of paper towel around and around, straight off the roll. (It was the really cheap stuff with no perforations and with obvious flecks of recycled paper in it.)

I have a piece of polyester batting shoved into the top because I didn't quite get it to the same shape as the top my head, and it's a bit uncomfortable.

It's also very hard to see in! I looked at photos of real sheep skulls for reference, and I put the eyes further forward to account for my human binocular vision, but they're still really far back and hard to see out of, so you have to look out the nose too.

I seem to remember first painting it with glossy acrylic paint, and then repainting it with matte paints because it just doesn't look as skull-like when shiny. The shading is awful because acrylic paints dry so dang fast, so it might be nice to go back and refine the texture a bit and repaint it again someday, but that's not at all on my priority list right now.

I hope this helps, and that you have fun making one!

Now that I've moved, I finally have space for my mannequin! Last winter the store I work at got new mannequins and didn't need the old ones anymore, and I wasn't going to pass up a free mannequin, so he's just been waiting in my parents basement for a year.

He hasn't got a name yet. He needs repainting and a few minor repairs, so I figure I should wait until after that to name him. Especially since I'd like to try adding some clay or something to his face to make it less chiselled. I guess he can just be called Mr. Fibreglass in the meantime.

Mr. Fibreglass is currently wearing a ram skull mask I made for a college assignment, a very simple stretch knit hood/cowl thing I made to go under the mask, a dagged robe I made in 2016, a pair of boots I got secondhand years ago (which are vinyl and in bad shape and do not keep my feet warm At All, so it's ok that I had to cut a slit in one of them to be able to put him back on the stand), a necklace I got from the thrift store, and a pair of very cheap fishnets that I don't remember buying. He'll be wearing this for quite a while because mannequins are very uncooperative and frustrating to dress.