A Jolly Sole with label!

We were flicking through magazines at the supermarket, as we do every week - as we like all things crafty we look at everything from knitting magazines, card making to sewing and baking! We came across this idea of a fish hanging decoration called the Jolly Sole. Well the idea struck an immediate cord with me as one of my friends cooks fish every saturday. A while back I was on holiday with him and his wife and he dutifully cooked fish for dinner. But when I realised he was cooking fish, I said "well, I quite like fish but not if it's got eyes staring back at me from the plate!". We had a little chuckle about it and he seemed unphased by my request! When the dinner arrived, we laughed so hard we nearly fell off our chairs! He had gone to all the trouble of making a little pastry shroud to cover the eyes of the fish - how thoughtful! So this idea of Jolly Sole and a fish with eyes, appealed to my sense of humour, and as I'm making it as part of his birthday pressie, I hope it will appeal to his sense of humour too! Now we didn't buy the magazine (and as we looked at so many, we can't even tell you which magazine it was in this month) because we didn't like anything else in the magazine.

Having got home we researched Dover Soles. Then half from memory and half from our heads, we came up with this.  We made our first prototype shape, which we stuffed lightly with polyester toy stuffing and top stitched but it didn't look right. Looked more like a normal fish. Determined to come up with something better, I took to my paper and pencil. I kept making the body fatter and fatter until it actually looked more like a Dover Sole than an eel! 

This fish is blue and white checks on the front and a solid blue for the back. We've used cotton batting inside this one, which looks better too. We altered the fish tail by texturing it with solid sewn lines which aren't on the original in the magazine. We think they add to it's character. We also wanted to include the words Jolly Sole on our piece somewhere. First, I thought about free-motioning the words on. Then we thought about embroidering them on. Neither options quite did it for me! What I thought might look good was a label of some sort. Hmmmm? Much pondering ensued!

Eureka! A little label hanging from ribbon at the bottom of the fish! Neat idea but with two problems! Firstly, I'd already made the fish and topstitched it, so any ribbon to be hung from the bottom would require very careful unpicking and re-sewing. Secondly, how do I get the writing on the label? Now here's a neat little idea for you! Firstly, get your friend who is way better at delicately unpicking small stitches without leaving large holes in the surrounding material! Result! Secondly, make your own labels using your computer, printer, herringbone tape, some t-shirt transfer sheets from Lidl and an iron! Yes really!

Here's what you do. Firstly, type the words into a Word document using whatever font you like. Print them out onto a sheet of normal paper to check that you have the right size writing to fit onto your chosen tape. We used 15mm cream herringbone tape. Once you're happy with it, then put a sheet of the transfer paper in your printer. BEFORE you tell it to print, remember that the writing has to be printed as a mirror image. I can do this with my Epson (but I'm not sure if all printers can?) in my page properties of my printer by simply ticking the box that says Mirror Image. The writing needs to be reversed, so how ever you do that, make sure your writing is back to front! Hit print! Now all you need to do is to cut a rectangular shape around your lettering. Place the transfer writing side down on your herringbone tape, so that the checked backing paper is facing upwards. With an iron on a low setting, place the iron on the backing paper for a few seconds at a time. Now you don't want to overcook it as it were coz you'll end up melting the writing and it'll go all blurry! So steady as she goes! You'll know it's fused coz it will have stuck to the tape. Now, peel off the backing paper and hey presto - a cute little label with the writing the right way round!

Now, we needed our label to be stiff and not floppy! More thinking ensued! Then another eureka moment! We have some hessian strapping that is a few inches wide and that is quite stiff so we thought it might do the job. We also felt it matched in with the sea theme of the fish too which was a bonus! So we now wrapped the tape label around a piece of the hessian strap and stitched around it with the same blue cotton that the fish was done in. Hey presto, cute little label! Hope this Jolly Sole makes my friend's husband smile!