Wednesday 28 November 2012

Half lemons

I've already made a standard full, uncut lemon (tutorial here) and I had a plan that I would make two halves of a lemon that could be stuck together with velcro to make a whole lemon...and then 'cut' apart by Little Imp to make some more 'lemin' tea.

But I couldn't get my plan to work.  Most frustrating! The halves look good enough individually:
 

But the plan to be able to 'stick' them together for 'cutting' apart just didn't work.  I couldn't get the face of each lemon half flat enough to be able to stick them together nicely.  If I'd had yellow velcro that I could have used as the segments that may have worked, but the velcro circle I used in the middle isn't big enough to overcome the bulge of each half.  

I'm not going to give full written instructions for the half lemons given they didn't work how I wanted, but here is a bit of a 'how to' in pictures.

Cut 3 elongated 'lemon' shapes

stitch 2 of these together

add the third shape and stitch on one side

stitch down the last seam, leaving no hole for turning right side out

find the centre and cut the shape in half
 I wonder if I had made the two halves separately from the beginning if they would have fitted together better? Not sure.
open out both halves and trim edges level

cut out a white & yellow circle. Cut down yellow circle to form segments. Stitch these onto white circle
 This is where I also added a small velcro circle that you can see below, but this really didn't work so I wouldn't bother next time.
Use blanket stitch to attach white circle with segments to stuffed lemon half
Finish off each half like the whole lemon  - a small green wool know on one and a stitched 'nobbly' bit on the other (see the original lemon tutorial for details) 

Any ideas on how to make 'cuttable' felt fruit welcome!  One friend suggested magnets which I think could work, but I haven't tried that yet.