It’s been some time since I have posted an update on the Santa Project. It is going slow. It is going slow on purpose. One step at a time. One puzzle at a time. I had taken a photo of the old Santa’s head and beard for a reminder. The beard was taken off and disposed of. No more fiberglass beard to cause a lot of itching. The beard is yet to be tackled.
What I did tackle was cleaning the face of decades of grime. There were so many staples in the face area. If they wanted the hair to stay in place . . . just put another staple in. I am not sure how I will tackle that in time to come.
The arms and legs have loose fiber cotton attached to the wooden frame. It is very fragile and messy. Twine of a sort was used to wrap it on the limbs. On the photo of the old Santa you can see the cotton fiber batting on the arm. Quilting a fabric with quilt batting in it and the exterior fabric being slippery, will allow for the jacket to slip on easily. Check that off the list of getting the arms taken care of.
New mittens for Santa was a must. Who knows where those hands had been! We have secured them with the quilted arm covering tucked into the tops of the mittens, again, for ease of dressing Santa. Rug warp has come in handy for securing arm wraps and mittens.
Shoulder pads were needed. A vest was the answer I came up with. The quilt batting is sewn securely at the shoulder level. The sides of the vest still needed to be sewn together by hand. When the jacket was originally taken off, the loose cotton fiber batting disintegrated and fell to the floor.
Making a new hat for Santa and getting the pom-pom in place was a challenge. The pom-pom was stuffed from inside of the hat after the white fleece and velvet hat were sewn as one.
Some painting on Santa’s face was needed. While cleaning the face some of the coloring of the eyes went by the wayside. Sham on Grammie, my hands are not as stable as was once the case. That is the luck of the draw in tackling some jobs. Once we fabricate the eyebrows, the mustache and the beard, very little of the face can actually be seen.
This has been a learning experience for me. I am far from being done. I am patient, and as it turned out, I had a lot of supplies in my stashes that I could put to good use. It is quite certain that there won’t be a crisis come Thanksgiving. Santa will be ready.
I suppose I could do a bulletin on the revitalization project of Santa for those who find themselves having a 55 plus year old Santa lying around. Well . . . perhaps not.
