Mr Potato Head & 1″ Binder Foot

Just posting this here for posterity.  LOL

My neighbor, Shannon, works at a pre-school.   So she had the idea of makin’ the Mr. Potato Head  costume.  She wanted to make it so the kids could move the parts around on it.   Sooooo….

We headed to Joann Fabrics… bought a chunk of the potato colored fuzzy fabric in a piece twice as long as she wanted for the costume.

We chopped it in half, I made the side seams.  (so now this thing is 120 inches around!  we’re talking ACRES of fabric here! lol)…

and then we pulled it up and I made cuts on one side for the neckline (front and back) and then for the arm hole opening.

Got it off of her, then made the remaining cuts …

and then bound the armholes and neckline with 1″ binding using the binding foot for my machine (that went fast!)…  It was great practice to try that foot!

Then, we made the thing a little more potato-like by putting some elastic around the bottom to make it bulge out at the bottom.

Shannon made the potato parts (eyes, mouth, etc).

The next day… she called me and said we missed something.  (?!?!?!)   She said where does a Potato Head store it’s parts?!?!?

(Hell if I know!  I have a big Potato Head in my office for kids to play with…there is one huge potato head that holds 4 more and their parts…  so the answer to me was “inside the biggest potato head?!?!?” )

Buuuuuzzzzzzzz… wrong answer!

She said;” It needs a trap door in its butt!”

So she came back and I sewed a trap door in the costume’s butt… so she could store the extra parts for her kids.

It’s almost kinda perverted… lol… but she (and her kids at school) loved it.

Here’s the foot… every sewist that needs to finish off edges of stuff easily needs one of these….

Janome Quilt Binder Foot (works on Babylock, Brother, & Elna, too)

And here’s a better picture of it (compared to the one in the link above) …

I guess the next time I use this foot, I’ll have to take some pictures (couldn’t find any easily when I just Googled around looking for it).   The foot looks a bit scary… but it’s really easy to use.   The cone on the front side of the foot (to your right) accepts a 1″ strip of fabric and then automatically folds it in half… and then in half again… so you have a perfect 1/4″ automatic double fold binding that sews down easily.

Toodles for now….

Sally  aka: RipStitcher