I finally started! The trunk is now decorated with swirls of blue carpet. It's taped up overnight, but the glue should be set enough to drive tomorrow. It took longer than I thought. yesterday I took big sheets of paper and traced the shape of the trunk and one side of the car (foolishly thinking I'd get all that done this weekend). Then I drew my swirly shapes on the paper, based on the designs I'd sketched out.
Once the template was drawn out, I loosely cut out the shape, took it outside, and trimmed the shape to fit the trunk pretty closely. I did leave about an inch on the top and bottom, in case I needed any extra fabric.
Next I put the template back over the piece and cut out the swirls. This was a lot harder than I expected. First, my cheap scissors were nearly useless for the task. They just couldn't cut through the plastic backing. The gods of sewing may punish me for it, but I used my nice sewing shears instead. I figure it will ruin them, but I can have them professionally sharpened after I'm done.
The other problem was that, since the carpet was too thick and stiff to use pins, the template shifted a lot. Nothing ended up the shape it was supposed to be. That didn't matter when I was cutting the ribbon shapes, but the circles ended up not all that circular.
As I cut the shapes, little bits of sparkly blue got up everywhere. I swept up handfuls of them afterwards. This stuff is worse than velvet in terms of the volume created, although velvet pills are harder to clean up as they tend to stick to other fabrics.
Once the shapes were all cut, I laid them out on the trunk. I put them all down for position, and then removed every other piece to create the pattern. As it turned out, I didn't need to cut the piece large: for some reason it took up much more space now. I'm sure I only left an inch or so of extra, but I ended up cutting three or four inches off the bottom of all the pieces.
Next, time to get out the caulk gun and a tube of silicon! I had intended to wear rubber gloves, so I could even out the silicon with my fingertips, but not get any on my hands. Unfortunately, all our rubber gloves had been been put into service dying hair. So I ended up using a paper towel to spread the silicon, and getting it all over my hands anyway.
Things I learned while gluing:
1. Do not glue things to your car when it's hot out. For that matter, do not do anything in the sun when it's hot out.
2. If you have caulk on your hands, do not touch your hair.
3. Get your hair up and out of your face before getting caulk on your hands. (See 2.)
4. Silicon washes off your hands with pumice soap, if you get to it quickly enough. I have no idea how to wash it out of hair.
5. After each application, pull back the handle on the caulk gun. That way the glue won't continue to seep out.
6. Silicon leaves a mark and cannot be painted. So be sure you only put it where you want it to go.
7. If you get silicon onto an area that you don't intend to cover, wipe it off immediately. You'll be left with a shiny spot. If you don't wipe it off right away, now you know where to put a fish or something.
8. Do not glue things to your car when it's hot out, like an August afternoon.
9. If you ignore #8, a cold shower is a good idea.
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