Finished Basic Automaton

The Magic Flight

It seems such a long time since I began this very simple, round and round automaton. Finally, I’ve finished. My main challenge has been to give the impression of magical creatures spiraling from a container without individually making fairies beings.

Finishing the Figure

The Magician’s daughter has had trousers, blouse, ruff and necklace made. The last thing to complete are her boots. The pattern is two pieces of the profile of the boot and one sole. The profile is sewn from ankle to the tip of the toe. The sole is added at the toe tip and hand sewn along the sides. I use tweezers to tuck the seams inside as it can get quite fiddly. It is best to keep the heel part open, then the foot can slip in and then hand sew it up the back to attach it to the foot.

Attaching the Figure

For the leg which isn’t kneeling, the sole of that boot needed to have a hole to accommodate the wire which was needed to attach the figure onto the wooden mechanism. The kit I used, fortunately for me, had pre drilled holes. I blanket stitched around the hole to stop it fraying. Once the figure was finished, I put the two pieces of wires through the hole of the sole and the drilled hole in the wooden mechanism and split them and flattened them in the opposite direction to one another to firmly keep the foot flat and in place.

A hole was cut into the tiny trouser leg for the leg which is kneeling, again, blanket stitch was used to stop the trouser fabric from fraying. The two wires were pushed through the fabric and then the hole in the wooden mechanism so that the knee lies flat. The two wires were split and pushed in to opposite directions. I checked that the wire could not be seen from the profile view.

A spiral of Fairies

I really didn’t want to make individual fairies for this piece. To give the impression of a mass of fairies, I used a voile fabric with a repeat pattern of silver droplets on it. To begin with the spiral structure, I cut the fabric into four leaf shapes and then sewed thin wire along the long edge of the leaf shape. This was done with metallic thread on the top and cream thread on the bobbin. The zigzag stitch encased the wire.

Metallic thread can be trixy to use sometimes. Looking at it closely shows it is made up of one long, flat strip of metallic foil. To give it strength there are thin, clear polyester threads plaited to surround the metallic foil. Remember to use sharp scissors as this plait can easily unravel before you get the three threads through the needle.

Once the fabric has been wired, the different leaf shapes can be overlaid to create a spiral structure. There are running stitch lines of silver coloured metallic thread to emphasis the direction of the swirl.

Attaching the Spiral to the Rod

Before the spiral was completed, I drilled two holes through the top section of the rod. I used a 1mm drill bit to create the holes. The drill bit was so small, I couldn’t use an electric drill so I spun the drill round slowly by hand. Then, I took a thin piece of wire and made holes either side of one of the wires in the spiral fabric and hooped the wire through the hole and twist the ends together. This was repeated with the lower hole.

After the fabric was attached, |I used the metallic thread and hand sewed the outside edges together to create the spiral. The bead was super glued to the figure’s hand. It is important that the hole in the bead doesn’t touch the rod as the rod needs to be able to rotate freely. It’s taken a long time but at last this automaton is finished.

Thank you for reading my July Blog. Enjoy your Summer.