COMIC: Sew Through Pre-existing Holes (p. 5) (Patreon)

You know the drill: I'm making a comic out of collage to explain how to replace the busted zipper in your boots. Great news, I'm up to panel 5 out of 6! This is the part of the process where you secure your new zipper replacement into place, sewing through the pre-existing holes from the last zipper.

Using the above photo, I drafted up this panel layout:

Surely there is a more efficient way, but I've been tracing each separate element of my design onto tracing paper and then re-tracing over that tracing using transfer paper to commit the outlines to their final fancy papers and then cutting them out. This does, of course, involve doing that second tracing facing backwards onto the wrong side of the fancy paper, so any lines will remain on the side the viewer won't see when I turn the final pieces right side up. It is... exceedingly easy to get mixed up on which way is right side up. Nevertheless, she persisted! 

Then I cut out approximately 1,000 tiny silver slips to serve as the most jank-ass zipper teeth you will ever see and fastidiously attached each one in place.

This time I found a blank name tag sticker sheet and traced the text onto that, instead of doing my old double-sided tape work.

Ta-da! Sew through them pre-existing holes!

In hindsight, I should have used a lighter colored thread for the sewn part, because it is tonally too similar to the mottled pink-purple shoe paper. But if you notice it, I think it's cool! I dipped a length of embroidery floss into glue so all the fibers would stay stuck together and I could shape it into that curving arc through the cutout paper sewing needle eye. I love the three-dimensionality of how that tiny bit of paper pops up and over the thread bundle.

One last panel to do!

 Tig appreciating my craft.