Wishing you a fun day with family and turkey and all that good stuff.
Archives for November 2009
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…
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…
Book Review: Soft Animals A to Z by Carolyn Vosburg Hall
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…
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…
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…
Book Review: Good Design in Soft Toys by Rudi de Sarigny
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…
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…
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,…
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.