Progress Report....

We had a deadline. With the utmost seriousness we set ourselves the date of June 4th, by which we would be finished all wedding diy projects.

There wasn't a doubt in our minds that we would fail this task, we had us six whole weeks - of course that was enough time! Wars have been won in less (don't ask me which wars) and so help me I was going to win the war against glue that's too sticky and rulers that aren't straight enough.

Well needless to say that date has been and gone. And no, we are not finished our wedding diy projects and yes our earnest belief that we would now seems hilarious. Hilarious in that slightly desperate and hysterical manner where the only options are either to laugh or to tear your hair out. And as my hair is giving quite enough trouble as it is I have chosen to laugh.

I could list all of the things that we haven't done but that would make me cry, so instead I will update you on some of our more successful projects. None of which are actually finished since you ask.

The Birds.

Well these are nearly finished. The Boy needs a tail and The Girl needs legs and a dress. And a veil. And they both need beaks. Ok, maybe they're not nearly finished.... Progress on the tail was made on our trip thanks to my chain smoking uncle who managed to find a significant number of black feathers without ever leaving the back step. How he acquired a handful of crow is a mystery. All I know is that every so often he would turn round, rollie in one hand and feather in another and mutter "this any use to you?". I decided not to question his methods as they were obviously working.

The dress has to wait until I have mine altered, as Girl Bird will be wearing the off cuts. I have been having worrying urges to take a pair of scissors to my dress in the name of getting this project finished. Must resist.

Here you can see the wings, which strangely are my proudest achievement. They were extremely satisfying to make, something about the combination of glue, scraps of cardboard, invisible stitching and tiny offcuts of fabric was very pleasing. Girl Bird's aren't stuck down yet as they will go over her dress. Obviously.

Here you can see her tail, which is made with feathers from live, free flying pet doves. There are a beautiful range of feathers available to buy - marabou, ostrich, peacock, cockerel but something tells me that they are farmed none too ethically. As a committed veggie and animal lover I was so relieved to find a woman on ebay who sells feathers shed from her pet doves. And then one day, when I was expecting some really tedious mail I opened an envelope and one tiny, fluffy white feather drifted out, floating gently on the breeze from the open window and landed on my lap. It made me smile.

A hair accessory perhaps. Or maybe a button hole for Boy Bird.

And simply because I thought it was funny.

I started writing a step by step guide to how I made these, but it was really really boring. If anyone would like to know anything about them though please do leave a comment and I'll let you in on the secrets of an inept seamstress. God knows I could have done with some help when I started out on this project (my first bird looked like Casper the Friendly Ghost. The second had a concave skull.)

Here is my first attempt, although looking at it now is rather depressing as she's so much more 'finished' than these two. Whimper. That need to get things finished is all consuming at the moment. It follows me everywhere.

I was going to share our progress on the initiations too but photobucket is being an arse and all that rushing to get things done has worn me out. It appears that the need to finish things is rendering me incapable of finishing anything. The voice in my head that whispers 'hurry up, hurry up...' is laughing snidely.