While She Naps

sitting

I'm playing with different ways to construct a seated animal toy.  I tried a dog with attached limbs. He is made from wool felt.

snow day

We are home today while a steady, slow-falling snow coats the outdoors.  I am trying to play around more with my camera. 

Today I figured out how to turn off the flash in the macro setting. I hate reading the manual, but I learn something each time I do.  Here are some shots from around my home.

 

 

 

Happy New Year!

A few highlights from my studio this year. 

I have had a really interesting, exciting crafting year. I've sewn nearly every day and that has been a true joy.  And I wrote a book this year (and I can't wait to see it come together and become available in 2010). I have so many ideas waiting to come to life in the year to come, and I have so many new things  to learn. Thank you for all of your support and encouragement and, most importantly, the inspiration you give me as I look at the incredible work so many of you produce.  And thank you, mostly, for checking in with me as the days and weeks and months of lives go by. 

So here's to a happy, creative new year!

Trash Menagerie at the Peabody Essex

Fish by David Edgar on view now at The Peabody Essex, Salem, MA

We visited one of our favorite museums today, the Peabody Essex in Salem, MA, where we saw an amazing exhibit entitled "Trash Menagerie."  Over thirty sculptures of animals, each made entirely from recycled materials.  I was so inspired.

I have always loved trash and have collected types of trash my whole life. I had a big bin of bits of wrapping paper saved from every present at each of my birthday parties as a child. I saved the fruit stickers from bananas for many, many years.  And when I left for college I left behind four big bags of paper towel and toilet paper tubes I had collected for years (my silly parents recycled them during my first semester away). And I've talked here in the past about one of my current trash collections.

So yeah, I love trash. And I love to make things from trash. This exhibit was right up my alley.

Some highlights?  Sweater dogs by Kitty Wales and wonderful fish made from brightly colored plastic bottles by David Edgar.  One of our favorite touches were the birds (of course) placed inside the taxidermy case, perched among the real stuffed birds.  You only notice them when you look a second time and realize they are artwork. There is a fish displayed the same way. 

The curator at the Peabody Essex has done a brilliant job. And one of the very best parts is that this exhibit is in the part of the museum devoted to children and families.  But the artwork is real. I would see it and it would be fantastic whether or not my kids were with me, but they were and they were just as excited as I was. The exhibits in this area of the museum change (Trash Menagerie is up through June 1), but they always real and yet always accessible to children.  We saw an amazing origami show in this space a few years ago. In my estimation the Peabody Essex far outshines any museum downtown.

You can read about the exhibit on the museum's website and learn more about the artists and their work through several very well done video interviews. But if you live nearby, visit in person. It's cool, I promise.

Lion

I am trying to say to myself that no project is too difficult to tackle. Sometimes I will have an idea and will start to think, "Well, how could I make that." And as I think about it, and it starts to get complicated in my mind, I say forget it.  There is a good possibility that it will take a long time to figure out how to do it and then in the end I won't like it and it will be a waste of all that precious time.

When you are a mom of two little children time is truly precious. In fact, I think that is one of the biggest blessings of having children - learning to value each moment, especially each moment we have to ourselves.  Even if I spend my time at a coffee shop eating a muffin and reading the paper, I savor that little outing like I never would have as my former, kids-free self.

When I do have time to myself, though, I use almost all of it for sewing. And when I explore something that takes hours and hours to figure out (which means days and days of work for me since I only have an hour or two a day) and then in the end I can't figure it out it is a struggle not to say it was a waste of time.

But I have seen through all these years that eventually I will figure it out.  It just means I need to develop my skills more. I will revisit that idea that I can't make happen right now in a year or two and I will be able to make it then and I will marvel at what I have learned.

All of this is to say that I made a lion and finished him today and that it was complicated and took a while to figure out, but I love him and I'm so glad I decided to try.

This illustration was my guide as I drafted the pattern.

I find illustrations very useful when designing soft toys. The illustrator has already taken the essential elements of the animal and laid them all out, usually exaggerating a bit the parts that really evoke that particular animal. To go from there to sketching a pattern is not too hard.

Anyway, I hope that you will join me in diving in and taking the risk that it might not work in the end. Because it is true, it might flop completely, but we will certainly learn from each project and we might just make something good in the process.

Anne Dyer's cat

Continuing on with my exploration of soft toy design, I decided to try a pattern from Anne Dyer's book, Design Your Own Stuffed Toys.  This book was recommended to me by a blog reader (thank you!).  It was published in 1969 (the year my parent's got married). 

Here is what I would say about this book.  It has some good techniques, but it is terrible to read. So much text, and really annoyingly technical.  Lots of annoying, and I think unnecessary measuring.  But her underlying idea is good - drawing a profile, creating gussets, darts and under body pieces to fill it out, widening the legs. 

I decided to try to sew the cat from the cover. 

I can't decide if it came out pleasantly Egyptian or strangely fox-like.  Either way, it was an interesting pattern because it is for a sitting animal.  No legs.  The neck has a nice shape and the darts and gussets are very well-designed.  Maybe there is something to all of Anne's calculating, but I seriously cannot understand it all.

it was lovely

We had a lovely Chanukkah.  The kids can sing the blessings and the songs in Hebrew now and it is totally adorable. We had four menorahs lit each night and with Shabbat on the last night,too, we had 38 candles lit.  So nice.

patchwork dog

I made a second cuddly puppy, this time with some treasured wool scraps.  He is in my shop now.

cuddly puppy

I am interested  in thinking about the pattern design elements that make a soft object a cuddly toy versus a more austere sculptural piece.  Baby-like features are key, I think, to an appealing toy.  Big eyes and a big round head like a toddler.  I designed this cuddly dog as a way to experiment with these ideas.

His head has small darts on either side so that when it is stuffed it is very round. And the head gusset is like a wide pie wedge adding to the fullness.  And his head is sewn separately and then attached to the body so that it can be turned in any direction.  This gives the finished toy a feeling of action, like the dog is frisky and inquisitive.  The base of the tail is gathered and then sewn down and  I think that is a very cute touch. He looks playful.

the horse design process continues

Here I was Thursday evening holding the envelope that contains CDs of my manuscript, step-by-step photos of 19 projects and all of my hand-drawn patterns.  All sealed up and ready to go. That was a big moment.  And my editor tells me all of the packages have been received in Colorado.  Very good news.

And now I can breathe a bit before we launch into the editing and design process.

It feels very strange to be free to make whatever I want again.  Strange in a mostly good way.

So I went back to the horse. And reworked it and reworked it again. 

Here is the last version next to the first.

My goal in all of this is to be able to design a pattern for any animal with ease.  I have learned a lot from reading the techniques from the few soft toy design books that are out there (all of them out of print), but I am working to develop my own system.  The books are all rather mathematical in their explanations (the head gusset must be 3/4 the width of the head from neck to crown, etc.).  When you read my book I  think you will see that I am not one for using math when sewing, or cutting in straight lines, or measuring.  I like to find a way to design that works without getting bogged down with equations and rulers. 

Anyway, after the first horse that was huge and elongated and thin in many wrong places, I redrew the body pattern smaller.  And it was going very well, until I started stuffing and realized that the darts on the underbody gusset were curving outward instead of inward.  

I fixed that and tried again, but when I stuffed it the legs were too narrow.  And see how they splay out?  The underbody is too wide on this version. 

I took a walk outside and came back to  try again.  Here is the side body and underbody on version II and version III for comparison.

Version II is up top.  See how I made the legs wider?  And the darts on the underbody deeper?  That helped a lot. On the final version I think the back part of the underbody could still have been narrower and the hoof on the back legs less curved.  Otherwise, much better.

Playing with color and materials helps keep me motivated to try again and again.  If I am also experimenting with different fabrics then I feel a stronger desire to sew up a new version and see what it looks like.  I use such small pieces of fabric that I really don't feel badly if something doesn't work. In fact, I am determined to not feel badly when things don't work period.  With every version there is learning.  And in the end there will be a system that will work almost all the time.  And that will be so valuable.

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.