Sunday marked the fifth day in a row that I finished a project. On Wednesday the graduation dress, on Thursday the shrug, on Friday the purple Viking, on Saturday the red Viking and on Sunday a dress/sweater (which you will read about once I get the person who will be wearing it (hopefully) in it). Let me now explain why we made two Vikings.
The University I work for has a very nice international recruitment officer who happens to be my friend. She travels around the world spreading the word and talking to lots of nice people. She regularly takes pictures of the places she is at for us to put on Facebook, but the umpteenth picture of obligatory brochure stand was getting a little much. So a while ago we thought up the plan to have her take a little Viking along on her travels. Why a Viking? The student association has a Viking as their mascot, since, apparently, the Vikings landed close to here when they first arrived in the Netherlands. Fine with us, a Viking it is.
Now, trying to find a nice Viking proved to be a little more difficult than expected. On Thursday they googled Viking plushy and I was tasked with creating a pattern to make a nice Viking. Turned out that playing with paper and tape trying to create a Viking was a lot of fun! So in the end we had 8 or so pattern pieces and a shopping list of felt colours to obtain. Returning with off-white, light grey, darker grey, beige-ish and red felt, black fuzz, black eyes and a school pin, we planned to create the Viking on Saturday.
On Friday after the ceremony, I wasn’t ready to go to bed yet, so I decided to test the pattern with some of my own felt (cheap felt, in horrid colours). This was the birth of the purple Viking. I learned a few things, like, sew the back of the bottom, not the side by hand for turning inside out. Clip close to the stitching on those horns or you’ll never be able to turn it. And, fuzz leaves more fuzz, especially pink fuzz on a dark blue skirt – not pretty. It turned out pretty nice so I was confident enough to try it on Saturday with the pattern we made.
The recruiting friend came by and we set out, first cut all the pieces, then sewed some bits together by machine and by hand, plucked fuzz of everything, inserted some eyes, sewed front and back together, turned the horns outside out and stuffed them, attached the oval bottom, turned it outside out completely, stuffed it even more, added the pin, closed the hole in the bottom and took some pictures. A Viking was born. He is a lot prettier than the first Viking I made. Now we just have to wait and see how he holds up to the wear and tear of travelling to at least 5 countries in the coming 5 weeks. And whether he’s received well in the (international) community. Fingers or horns crossed!
