Beary tricky

Yesterday I set out with Argy and Bargy to do the week's grocery shopping and when I came-to, I appeared to be at the cutting counter in Spotlight with a basket of goodies. Funny, that.

Amongst the purchases was a small stack of wash cloths at bargain basement prices. Just right for turning into washcloth puppets. I saw the idea for a very cute frog washcloth over at Tin Can Canoe over the weekend and thought I would try and follow the linked tutorial, which is on Cut Out And Keep. Being as I had rather a lot of brown washcloths, it seemed that a bear might be in order.

Now the tutorial is very straight forward, but as usual I managed to complicate things in a way that only I can. As I cut into my super-cheap wash cloths, I noticed that not only were they shedding terry toweling everywhere, but the fabric appeared to be imminent danger of out-and-out disintegration. Right-o, I thought, I can fix that with my trusty overlocker. In fact why don't I just sew the whole thing with the overlocker. It seemed a good idea at the time.

So it came as a bit of a surprise to find that the overlocker really didn't like several thicknesses of loopy, falling-aparty towelling bears ears with their dangerous curves. I got away with the first ear, but the second one was sucked into the overlocker. I couldn't believe the mess - it took me half an hour to extract the ear and the huge tightly wound knot of thread. All the while Argy was yelling excitedly pull, pull, pull, Mum. I virtually need to put my foot on the machine to help lever out the fabric and thread mess.If I'm going to have a sewing accident, its always going to be a big one!

Anyway, tempted as I was to throw in the towel .... or wash cloth, even .... I persisted with the serging and the end result is Grubby the Bear, a pal for bathtimes at our place.