Inside Joke Sewing

MONTHS ago someone asked me to help him out with a gift for his groomsmen in his wedding.  It's an inside joke between the three of them.  OK, I said.  No problem.  The details:  3 golf club covers.  Easy enough.  The kicker?  They have to be in the shape of Blinky.  Not Blinky the pursuit-loving ghost of Pacman fame.
Blinky the 3-eyed fish from the river near the nuclear power plant of The Simpsons fame.  Need a visual?

 This.

 Not this.

This was not an easy task.  There is not a single assist with this ANYwhere.  The closest I could find was how to cut a fish out of a piece of felt (like a kid might cut a fish out of paper), but I had to take a flat image and try to make it 3-D.  I had several samples that I worked up, different kinds of eyes, etc. Last weekend, I finally just went for it. I took my time, tried to think about each step, and finished them.  They're not the greatest, I wholeheartedly admit this.  BUT I do think they're pretty adorable.  And there shouldn't be much confusion as to what they are supposed to be.  I avoided a classic Bee blunder and made sure they fit the golf club before I finalized everything.  So, here they are.

The photo on the left cracks me up because the way the eyes are makes this fish look so concerned.  I guess it should be having three eyes and all...

He asked me to add just a touch of shading over the eyes to make it really look like the character.  I tested different markers on a swatch and eventually ended up with this:

 

Adds just the right touch...

So that was my sewing ordeal I mentioned at the end of this post.  I feel they should maybe be fatter or something, but I don't know.... I'm not an artist so I don't have that sense of perspective and spatial whateverness to figure it out...and I needed a pom-pom size between this size and the next one down for the eyes to be almost perfect.  I was so worried these wouldn't be good enough, but he absolutely loved them.  He filled me in on why these were so important to him and showed me what else he had come up with as part of this present, and let me tell you this--if someone ever gave me a gift with this much thought and time and effort behind it, wrapped in memories and good times, as a symbol of their appreciation for being beside them on their wedding day, I would flat out cry.  That's how touched I'd be.  I'm glad people don't give me gifts like that.  I get grotesque twisty-face when I cry.  It's not attractive.  No lie.

He gave me an exorbitant gift card to my favorite craft store as a thank you.  So everyone's thrilled! The best kind of business deal.