While She Naps

almost there

Really, I want to do something creative, but I can't. The book is due Friday.  Friday, my friends.  Wow. UPS is coming tomorrow afternoon to pick up 11 boxes of birds.  And I'm editing patterns.  Editing patterns is confusing and mind-numbing. They all look the same, but they are all different in subtle but vitally important ways.  10 more to edit now and then I'll be all set.

And that's the news.  8 months worth of work and it is nearly out the door. I'm excited.

It rained and snowed and blew all day today. Blah.

In the meantime, in the process of washing the last few potatoes left from our CSA for dinner tonight I found this lovely potato which cheered me up.   

And tomorrow is a "cookie walk" at Roxanne's school.  I'm a newbie - she is my oldest and she is in kindergarten - but it seems like a big bake sale with only cookies.  I made gingerbread men and some seriously delicious shortbread rounds. 

A magician is coming to entertain the kids, while they eat cookies, I guess.  Should be a good time.

Sewing some toy patterns by Mabs

I'm going to return to the horse and revise.  But the other day I checked out a few vintage craft books from the local library and I couldn't resist sewing through some more patterns.  I have checked these books out many times, especially four or five years ago when I was first beginning to sew toys. It is great to look at them again with different eyes now.

The Big Book of Soft Toys by Mabs Tyler was a favorite then and is still a favorite. First of all, I love the name Mabs.  People often call me Abs, so I feel a special affinity.  Like so many great craft books, this was originally published in 1972.

And there are some adorable patterns in here.

Cary has sewn up some beautiful versions of many of these including the donkey and camel, the penguin,the giraffe, the tiger, and the polar bear.  Adorable! 

I am interested in ways to make pattern drafting very simple.  I was drawn to the bunny on the cover because it is just three simple pieces - a side body, an underbody and a head gusset.  I think this design could work for any crouching animal. 

Very cool.  Drafting patterns like this could be a great workshop.

Humpty Gets Some Press

I'm excited to show you the latest issue of Australian Homespun Magazine where there is a very nice article about me and my work as well as the pattern for my Humpty Dumpty doll.

I get many, many emails requesting this doll in particular so I am very pleased that my pattern is now published.  Hooray for Australians and their dedication to handcraft!  

The first Humpty I made was for the show I had at the Wellesley public library three years ago. I set him up on a little makeshift wall I made from stacked bricks at the entrance to the children's room.  I sold him very quickly and then moved on to an intense three years of making birds so it was very nice when Homespun contacted me and wanted to publish the Humpty pattern. 

I had a lot of fun making two Humptys for them, both of which will be for sale in a few months in my shop.  In the meantime, check out this issue of the magazine.

little tiny birds and the looming deadline

I made this little ornament today.

It is about all I can finish now knowing I'm supposed to be writing and editing and drawing.

That and another of these little assemblages.

They are in my shop today. 

The book is in good shape I think. Really. I just need to buckle down and finish the annoying little details that I've been putting off.  But I'm okay.

Last night was Stella's parent-teacher conference at nursery school.  We walked in and sat down and the teacher turned to us and said, "Stella is a gift." It was wonderful.  And she certainly is. 

Happy Thanksgiving to You!

Wishing you a fun day with family and turkey and all that good stuff.

tiny bird assemblages - good for procrastination

I like to make these tiny bird assemblages when I need a break from the other sorts of sewing I'm supposed to be doing, and the technical writing, and life in general.  When I was supposed to be packing last night for our trip to Connecticut I worked on this instead.  I just listed it in my shop.  Maybe I should get back to the tasks at hand, huh.

working on a horse

There are a lot of final things to finish before my December manuscript deadline.  Between writing and putting a million finishing touches on everything I am continuing to study four-legged toy design.  I set out to design a horse.  Here is the sketch. I liked the sketch and thought it was proportionally okay, but when I stuffed it things went haywire.

Legs are too short and thin, nose is too wide and long, body is too thin and way too long, butt is too big. Too many problems! I will start again with a new drawing, something smaller and hopefully in better proportion.  I learn from each one, though, so I'm not going to sweat this bizarre-looking horse.

sewing through more patterns

I've had this book, Soft Animals A to Z by Carolyn Vosburg Hall, for a while, and although I'd read all the patterns I had never sewn anything from it.

It is a fairly new book as soft toy pattern books go, published in 2003, and it is ambitious.  26 patterns of every  sort of animal.  Lots to learn, for sure.

I chose the pig to start with because I liked the way the ears are attached. 

There is a slit cut in each side body, really more like a triangular dart. The pre-sewn and turned ears are inserted into the dart after the side bodies are attached to one another and then the dart is sewn up, trapping the ears in the seam while also shaping the head. Cool!

Okay, more about under bodies.  The under body on this pattern reaches all the way to the snout and as it gets near the cheeks it widens.  The cheeks come out looking really full and, well, piggy. 

Overall I really like this pattern. It is really well drawn and well designed. I think the tail could be thinner and longer, but that's a small thing and easy to redraw. 

ram - second try

I edited the ram pattern and gave it another try and I'm happier with this version.

In a fit of studio cleaning the other day I accidentally threw out the under gusset, head, and head gusset pattern pieces.  At first I was really annoyed at myself, but then I decided maybe it was a good thing because it forced me to really try again from scratch. 

This ram has longer, wider legs, a shorter chin and an awesome under body gusset.  Here is the back end of the under body

Nice and narrow, pulling the legs in, with wide oval darts at the top of each leg.

And here is the front end of the under body

It extends all the way up to the chest.  I'm learning.

I really liked the horns on version 1 so I took them off and attached them to version 2.

These new animals are big, at least for me.  This ram is 17" tall. And I love the felt. So many surface designs are possible with felt.  Once I have mastered all the elements of four-legged animal design I will work more with the body material both before and after sewing.

ram - first try

After Rudi's camel and lamb I thought I would try to apply some new skills to a first draft of a ram pattern. It is really helpful to see the ram photographed.

I need to make  a number of edits to the pattern. Even though I tried to exaggerate the length and width of the legs, they are still skinny and short.  And I think I need to make soles for the feet. Soles are such a pain to sew because they are small and fiddly, but really they add a lot to the finished animal.

The under gusset is not shaped quite right. In the back, it could be narrower so that the back legs are drawn together and don't splay quite so much.  In the front it could be longer, reaching up to the chest.  I find the under gusset the hardest piece to envision.  Still working on developing that skill.

I like the overall head shape and the head gusset is just right. I added two small neck darts which gives the head a fullness that is perfect.  And because the head is attached separately I could make a herd of sheep and rams and have their heads turned in various directions as though they were looking at one another, or at a nearby predator, or prey. The chin, though, is a bit long. I had made a little beard to cover it, but Charlie came in last night and saw it and burst into hysterical laughter which I took to be a bad sign.  I like the stitched horns, though, and I like that they're huge. 

Okay, so that is ram version 1.  Back to the work table.

Rudi's lamb

In between writing pattern instructions for the last six projects in the book I made Rudi's lamb.  I'm still enjoying sewing with wool felt.  I had a few felt punched flowers left over from another project and made the lamb a little floral garland to wear around her neck. 

The top of the legs on this pattern extend beyond the under gusset and are sewn to each other.  That is interesting for sure and the first time I've used that construction method. I think it might serve to bring the legs in tightly so that they don't splay at all.  Clever.  The legs on Rudi's patterns are all wider than I would have drawn them, but they make the animal sturdier in the end.  I think drawing the legs wider than you think they need to be might be a good trick. Like the camel, the pattern for the tail is also very cool.  Overall a good project.

learning from patterns

Now that the mass of sewing for the book is just about done (nearly 40 birds, whew!), I have a renewed interest in designing four-legged animals. Believe it or not, I feel like my mass of knowledge about fabric birds is now in this repository and suddenly I feel totally ready, and free, to move on to something knew.  I still love my birds, don't get me wrong, but I feel like making more birds is the easy path. Easy and endless and I need to push myself forward to explore and to learn.

I've made four-legged animals before.  For a long while I made jointed animals. I like how the joints invite people to play with the finished animal, but jointed toys avoid the issue of creating darts and gussets that make the animal stand up and be proportionate. 

I've designed some good elephants and a few different dogs, but I really would like to come a better understanding of all the different options, all the diferent methods, of four-legged animal design. 

The best place to start, I think, is the same way I started four and a half years ago when I first began making softies: 1970's craft books.  My favorite vintage toy making book is Good Design in Soft Toys by Rudi de Sarigny.  This book is a classic and one I've read many times.  I've learned a lot from Rudi already, but I think if I work my way through more of his patterns I will become better versed in gussets and darts, attaching legs and shaping faces. 

I know that I'm not alone in loving this book. Many wonderful people make his patterns.  Here is Rudi's duck, which I'm sure you've seen made up by many crafters around the blogosphere:

And here is Rudi's lamb which I'm sure you will also recognize. Stephanie makes very sweet versions of many of these.

And I am hoping to work my way through some of his patterns, too. I've always liked Rudi's camel. I made it yesterday from wool felt and already I am learning.

 

First, I forgot how great wool felt is for sewing softies. I have been sewing in cotton for three year. I learned a very cool way of connecting the under part of each leg to the underbody gusset.  I also think the darts that create the hoof are pretty cool. Even the tail is cool. 

There are so many excellent images of rams around the craft and design blogs right now. This amazing show is a big inspiration, and Nicole's wonderful work, too.  In the end, I'd like to make my own ram using some of the knew techniques I learn. I hope you'll bear with me as I make new things that I cannot sell. I am working to learn so that in the end it will be possible for me to create in three-dimensions all the ideas I have in my head.

handmade hat

I finally made this hat from Amy's book.  I've wanted to make it for a long while and now that we finally have a 21st century printer that can create an enlarged copy (!) I was able to enlarge the pattern to the proper size.  This project was super satisfying. It took ten minutes total, from cutting the fabric to tying the finished hat onto Stella's head.

Roxanne chatted with me the whole time and picked colors for her own hat, which I made for her last night after she was in bed. I put it at her place at the table and she found it this morning at breakfast.  Now Charlie wants one.  Not so sure about that.

hope you had a happy one

Stella dressed as her beloved Pink Kitty for Halloween.  Unfortunately Kitty has become a rather limp, gray, raggy sort of cat. Stella, though, was very happy being as pink as could be. 

She and Abe were quite a pair. 

swan

I made this fabric swan while developing some new patterns.  She is in my shop now.

Abe

Roxanne as her favorite president.  Turns out very few of her fellow kindergarteners know of Abraham Lincoln, but their parents think it's a riot.

finger puppets for Loretta

I have a new niece, Loretta.  I haven't met her yet, but I hear she is adorable and resembles my father.  This must mean she is a bit swarthy with thinning hair. I couldn't resist making her a set of hand-stitched finger puppets from Kata Golda's book. She will get these for Hanukkah.

I almost never sew while my children are here.  In order to get into my creative groove I need a quiet house. I usually sew in the morning while they are at school or in the late evening once they've gone to sleep.

 

I've found with these hand-stitched felt projects that I can sew with my children playing nearby.  The pattern is all right there in the book.  All I need is the big box of wool felt scraps, some embroidery floss, scissors, pins and an needle. 

 

I made all of these puppets while Stella played with the felt scraps, making a little cape for her stuffed monkey.

I am not a knitter and I always look enviously at so many knitting women's ability to make something while taking care of children.  Making these little felt things let's me do both and that is very nice.

apples and pumpkins

We went to Dowse Orchard on Sunday afternoon to enjoy the beautiful fall day and to pick the last apples of the season.  We also chose our Halloween pumpkins and went on a tractor ride.  We went late in the afternoon and the colors were so saturated.  It was amazing. 

Shabbat child

Stella was the Shabbat child at nursery school on Firday.  She took her duties very seriously, passing out cups and challah  to everyone.  And she picked the first Shabbat song to sing with the class.  And she got to be line leader going out to the playground AND back in again.  Charlie and I can't believe how big she's gotten.

sneak peek week: day five