Ruben Car

We've talked about doing this for a *l *o *n *g time. Making Ruben a cloth car. Our first proper joint project, joining the things we both like. Ruben began by choosing which car from his favourite vehicle book (Richard Scarry - "Cars,Trucks and things that Go") to model ours on. I told him to use post-it notes and left him to it. As you can see, he's chosen a few. There are another 22 pages of similar choices. I explained that this could be the first of oh-so-many cars, but that being the first we should go simple, and we opted for the little yellow two-door he's pointing at *without* the boat on top. That took some persuading. Two imperatives were doors that open and wheels that go round. He also wanted it to make some kind of noise and we settled on adding some jingle-bells in with the stuffing.

We drew a basic car shape template, then action. Ruben painted the passengers (self-portrait of himself at the wheel) in fabric paint, that was quite hard to use. The back window is felt-tip pen. Seeing as this will probably never be washed (lets be honest) next time I'd do all the drawing in pen. He also cut out the windows. He's good at cutting. He loves it. Loves it too much. Scissors are on probation since cutting his duvet cover, my hat and finally attempting my hair. Stuffing was good, with all the preamble snowball throwing, head in a cloud, up the jumper messing.
Being very excited about the whole thing, and so quite fidgety and jumpy at times, it wasn't easy when sat on my lap to watch the machine sewing. And he's heavy. And I'm not as patient and calm as I'd like to be (understatement). So it wasn't all joyous.

With the hand sewing, I push the needle through, he pulls it out; I push, he pulls; push, pull; ok boring (3/4 of a bumper done) and he's hopped off to fly planes in his bed. Fine. The name-tags-come-number-plates were a brilliant Christmas present and this is their first outing.
What are you going to call it? "Ruben Car". Good choice.


Yes we have noticed it's missing wheels. They are undergoing durability and mobility testing at our mechanic's workshop. Really I'm just too impatient and proud to wait til it's finished to show, because it felt very good to do something that has been promised for nearly a year. We are both equally delighted with what's done, and full of improvements for the next.