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.