Meet Helena 😂 - A Dream Came True The Wrong Way

First of all let me say hello to the Needlework community as it's been ages since my last post here. I used to be a regular poster two years ago, but then life has given me other assignments and had no time for sewing. However, today I'm back with a crazy project everyone is going to laugh at, even me 😂

I'm going to introduce Helena to you but first let me tell you why I said a dream came true the wrong way.

We have a vine at my dad's and often happens that the starlings eat half of the crop till we get to harvest. I can't really blame them as the grapes are sweet and they also have to eat something. My dad on the other hand is thinking of the vine and the loss. Basically it's not such a big deal as we don't need that wine anyway, each year we make more than we can consume.

But because of this problem, I have been thinking why not make a scarecrow as there are so many cool ones on the internet. However, I never had the time to put together one.

This year, for some unknown reason pigeons started to use my balcony. A lot! As much as I love them, they are making a very scary noise and what is even worse, they are marking the territory the most unpleasant way. I mean sh*tting on the ledge and I'm not really keen to clean it up on the daily bases. So I thought why not make a scarecrow and hang it up on the balcony?

So meet Helena! If things go well, she's going to scare the pigeons away from my balcony in a few days.

Materials

At first I thought I would do the whole thing from scratch, but in the end just gave up on the idea as not worth spending so much time on it, when I can buy some baby clothes from the thrift store and that's what I did. I gave 1.5 euro for these jeans, the T-shirt and the hat.

Method

I left home with the intention of buying the smallest clothes but planning is one thing and executing the plan is a different thing. So I bought what I could get, but the jeans were too long and I had to shorten them.

Since I had to shorten the jeans, I thought why not make the shoes of the cut piece and I did.

Then came the fun part. I thought I have to make the body of canvas, because the T-shirt would not hold the shape as it's made of cotton, so I took this canvas, that used to be a bed sheet once and it is not needed anymore. The fun part was the tailoring. I've never taken any sewing classes, so I have no idea about tailoring, but the good thing here was Helena doesn't have to be perfect of pretty as she meant to be a scarecrow, not a beauty queen.

So I took the T-shirt and made a drawing on the canvas, following the lines and this is what I got.

This is what I got. One arm done, the other missing.

So I had to cut out a new piece and create the other arm. And this is how the body looked like after attaching the missing arm.

Then came the head which gave me a little bit of headache. I had no idea how bit the head should be or how to put it together. So I took a plate, drew a circle and made the neck.

Drawing the eyes, eyebrows and lips was the easy part because as I said, Helena was not meant to be the beauty queen.

At first I had no idea how to make the eyes and lips. Some use buttons for the eyes but I did not want that, plus the lips can't be made of buttons. So I decided to use embroidery.

After that, Helena had a face and red lipstick.

Then I had to stuff it. I still have a lot of materials from the times I was sewing, so I took out those pieces I thought I would not need anymore.

And this is how Helena took shape finally. For the arm I used a wooden stick to stay in that T line.

Unfortunately the project is not finished as I still need to figure out a few things and there was no time for that. So far I'm not saying I did everything perfectly, but it's a good result I think.

The whole thing may look stupid but for me it was a couple of hours of fun and relaxation. Helena will be finished soon and she'll be put to good use. I hope she's going to scare the pigeons away and won't make friends with them. I would hate to know the pigeons would sh*t on her too 😂