Yesterday I got all the supplies together for turning the Joan Thomasson wizard into a standup piece. You can see many of them above. There's the blue polished chintz, the feather boa trim (hope you can see the silver among the feathers), the black and white copy of the stitched canvas all cut out to use as my pattern, and a mesh bag full of pebbles.
To weigh the base of the standup, I considered buckshot (which I couldn't get) and aquarium gravel (which seemed too heavy). I ended up browsing the crafts emporium's artificial flower aisles. Besides fake roses and chrysanthemums, they also sell glass bowls and pebbles, marbles and glass ovals to fill the bowls, either for display or to hold the artificial flower arrangements in place. I considered glass ovals or glass marbles but the medium-sized pebbles seemed the right weight and were inexpensive, two dollars instead of three for glass oval pebbles or glass marbles.
The rocks will weigh the base. I'll remove the tag and put them inside a plastic bag probably but not cut the mesh. They will be double-bagged, in other words. Not shown is the quilt batting and foam I'll put inside. I didn't want to get it dirty.
I've not made any more progress on this--I didn't even have time to iron the fabric yesterday, much less use the paper pattern to cut it out with an inch extra all around on all sides--but I hope to have a little more time today. Weekends are the time I am not too tired to do finishing but they also are the busiest days of the week!
Jane/Chilly Hollow
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow
