Craft Egg & Bacon taught me patience!

Both my closest work colleague and my two best friends, being my partner (whom I call “Mere Male”) and my twin sister, say that I have a lot of patience.

The trouble is that I have lots of patience and tolerance, when it comes to dealing with people and serious situations, but not so much when dealing with arts and crafts!

Besides working on a panda bear latch-hook kit currently, latch hook is the easiest thing in the world for me, this Easter holiday I bravely returned to my Klutz “Sew Mini Treats” set.

It is wonderful and contains all you need to sew 18 delicious food treats. Mere Male has already cleverly made a Carrot from this set, although unfortunately, upon my proudly carrying it around with me everywhere (perhaps for emergency food rations), it got lost.

Having got away with supervising and admiring Mere Male’s work, and this Easter expounding upon how fantastic the Klutz set was, I pointed out to my sister that she should be able to sew the egg and bacon.

She was happy to turn her hand to patching together a nice little egg, though I hindered rather than helped her, as I forgot to point out that there were pre-cut tiny pink cheeks to use.

My sister carefully cut out largish cheeks from pink felt, and quickly sewed on a wobbly mouth, then used the largest stitches she could, to sew most of the 2 pieces of egg together, leaving space for the kapok stuffing.

MM was approving of the resulting eggy wonder, saying the poor egg looked quite unhappy at its fate, which was soon to be placed with a rasher of bacon, for consumption.

I could not get away with my sister telling me it was my duty to finish the dish, by sewing the bacon. I regarded, with horror and alarm, the 2 rashers in the instructions, each with 2 white strips.

“What are those white things?” I asked with suspicion, hoping to get out of the job.

“Those are supposed to represent the streaky fat in the bacon” MM replied.

“Oh” I answered, crestfallen that it wasn’t a mistake, which would mean that there would be no bacon tonight.

Bravely I set about staring at the floss and my partner pointed out that it was six ply and we were supposed to separate out the strands. So that is why it was thick going through the felt!

I informed them that I was only making one rasher and only one white streak, and set to impatiently, I mean, tortuously drawing around the bacon rasher template on red felt, with a black texta.

“It looks like the bacon is burnt” MM advised me, because to my dismay, black lines were etched on the edge of the felt piece, after I had cut it out from my sketch, with a thick texta.

I abandoned the texta for a pencil, which worked better, then laboriously tried to cut away the black texta on the other piece, keeping to the shape.

Next, I cleverly and patiently sewed the white part right along the middle of my bacon rasher.

The black eyes are fiddly to handle, being so small. I elected to use the white thread for the pupils, to sew the eyes to my felt piece.

While my sister wasn’t watching, I quickly sewed the mouth, finding it a bit challenging to shape it into a smile.

Patiently, I tried back-stitching but muffed it up, so a microscopic look at the bacon’s mouth will show little curliques sticking up from his mouth, but it was the best I could do.

With importance, I told my sister that one has to wind the thread around the perimeter of the piece, that needs sewing, once, and double that length of thread at least, in order to have enough thread for the job.

The trouble is that I had too long a bit of thread and a knot soon appeared. I was patient with this, wondering aloud “why do I always get knots?” I tried another needle to un-pick it and tried pulling both ends of the thread, but to no avail.

There was nothing else to do but grin and bear it, and to end at the knot, and start again.

I decided to leave the bottom and some of one side open, to push in the stuffing and worriedly asked my assistants if this would do. MM replied “Why don’t you put some stuffing in now, then see how you go?”

“Oh yes” I said happily, as I had just got around the corner from the top of the piece, and gently pushed in some kapok.

Of course, about 1cm from the bottom, along the long edge yet to be sewn together, I ran out of thread altogether. I told my sister, “Make sure you have three times as much thread as the length of the edges you are sewing.”

I had to get Mere Male to help me separate out one strand of thread, because I was scared of the whole 6 ply bunch bunching up and getting into a tangle.

“Don’t worry so much about what is happening with the thread” he advised, “you just pull out the thread and keep pulling and they will all sort themselves out.” I admired his skill in extricating a red thread.

At last my happy rasher was completed, and we put it with the poor egg, whose blushing cheeks were in full bloom, showing alarm at being a part of supper.

It had taken me the best part of a half hour to sew my dinner treat, but I’m glad that I stuck with it. Patience won in the end.

The needles that come with the kit are too large for going through the felt, so you will have to get a finer needle from your own sewing kit or purchase or borrow one!

About the Author

Celine Lai was born in Malaya (not Malaysia) and is the oldest inter-country adopted person in Australia. She loves reading and writing, and runs WordPress blogs and writes technical documents. She blogs mainly on Fascinating Animals.

Subscribe to my weekly email newsletter to be notified of my new Stories