Fri, 05 Jun 2020

I had hoped to have the revised Wacky Chickens finished for today’s entry, but in fact they’re not even started. It got into the 90’s here (which is high summer temperature for these latitudes) and I decided getting into the attic for the faux fur didn’t sound fun when I had all the right colors of minky down here.

But minky is not great for giant birds, so here is a half-scaled version of the chicken. I carefully deleted all the seam allowances, scaled the pattern pieces down, and added them back in. The larger version has generous half inch seams, while the smaller has my more usual quarter inch seams.

And yes, after I was done with all of that I realized that in fact I had just put back in the exact same seam allowances I had deleted. 🤦

Anyway. After wasting all that time, I decided what I really wanted to make was a quarter-scale chicken, which will still have quarter-inch seam allowances. But that’s not happening today.

This one does have the three-part chicken feet, and through the magic of math you can print them out at 200% and use them for the full-size chickens. The diagrams are probably more clear than I can be, but I’ll make a stab at it:

Take the two top pieces, which have “points” at the ankle. Take one front piece (three toes) and one back piece (one toe), and match them right sides together (RST) from the leg opening down to the point on each side seam. Pin or clip and sew them, making sure you stop at the point and don’t sew into the seam allowances.

Now open up the toes, and match the upper foot RST to the foot bottom. The seam at each point will open up so that the seam allowance is a straight line (okay, a shallow curve) and it should all match fairly easily to the foot bottom. Pin or clip and sew all the way around the foot. Turn right side out through the top leg opening, stuff the toes, and follow the rest of the directions in the main pattern.

[Wacky Chicken, 50% Scale] [Wacky Chicken, 50% Scale, Ink Saver Version]