Elphanso it is! thanks to the woman behind the bird bath for the great name.  He’s up in my shop and entered in the 2nd annual softies awards too.  Wish me luck!  And because I can’t muster up the energy to get off the couch I will play along with a little meme that I have been tagged for by fiona of fede (blog and shop). She makes some pretty fantastic soft hammer rattles, that you should go see.  Okay here goes:

4 jobs:

baker
nanny
bed and breakfast manager (mostly cleaning toliets and ironing! sheets)
chocolatier

4 favorite movies:

amadeus
fight club
grizzly man (and everything by werner herzog)
pirates of the caribbean

4 places I’ve been:

jerusalem
copenhagen
istanbul
the corn palace

4 places I’ve lived:

athens and
rome, briefly
bodega bay, ca
a little cabin with no running water and no electricity

4 favorite tv shows:

law & order in all their many incarnations
lost, when it’s on
the office
30 Rock

4 favorite radio programs:

this american life (who doesn’t like this?)
all college radio programs and their awesome college hosts
a prairie home companion, because if you were born in MN you must listen to this
marketplace on npr

4 favorite foods:

chicken livers
french macarons
nueske’s bacon
brioche

4 places I’d rather be:

in my sewing room
turkey
japan
in a bar with all my old friends

I’m supposed to tag 4 people, so I’ll tag the first four people with blogs that commented on my last post (suckers!).

anna

jenna

jodie

tanaya

I’m still working on the animals I was talking about a while back.  There has been more unnecessary law & order watching than sewing, but there is some progress. I’ve never actually drafted a pattern for one of my toys before and it’s pretty time consuming–especially when you have an anal retentive side.  I wanted the elephant to have a big head gusset that would extend down to his trunk and I couldn’t just whip this up.  This is my first attempt and though it looked the way I imagined, his trunk stuck out straight–Pinocchio style–when I stuffed him.  I made a few more and could have kept on making a little muslin menagerie, but I’m trying to make my toys less straight and narrow and more folky and improvised (strangely it’s the latter that needs a pattern).

So I cut into this amazing sparkley striped linen I got from namolio’s shop. I was going to make all the animals from thrifted outfits, and some still will be, but I was trying to cram too many ideas into one toy: stripes or patterned faces, moustached, thrifted outfit transformed into plush toy.  Besides this grey linen was a little wrinkly just like a naked elephant.

Here he is almost done.  He (ah! no name! any suggestions?) is sporting this fantastic fake moustache sent to my by Melinda (thank you again!).  And after seeing little elephante sporting this polka dot moustache, I don’t know if I should use a completely different print for the moustache or make it out of the denim I used for his pants or the grey linen again, or embroider a big fluffy one. I need feed back from all of you who have made it to the end of this post.

I always appreciate it when other plush artists post about their creative process. And though I am far from an artist and my process is quite random, I did make a few drawings for some animals I want to make. Since I saw this bear, I’ve been thinking about making a doll from a pair of pants. I think this elephant looks a little like an old timey strong man from the circus, except for his puny arms I guess (I’m not very good at limbs). But we’ll see how he turns out because I’m still new to pattern making. The idea of making toys from clothes is really exciting–not just using the fabric, but integrating the look of the shirt or dress or hell the whole outfit into the finished doll. It would be like the feature Domino magazine had where they took an outfit and turned it into a room, do they still do that? I always thought that was such a clever idea, but they never seemed to get it right somehow.

I’m rambling. Here is an actual artist who makes some mighty fine plush stuff: sien keegan.

This isn’t quite a year in review, seeing as I’ve only had this blog since September, but the pictures are all toys I designed and made since then. Really it’s more of a gratuitous pat on the back for finally getting off my ass and making the things I think up.   I’m horrible when it comes to doing new things, especially when they are creative endeavors.  The teenager in me is scared of what people will think and of failing miserably and the grown woman in me doesn’t understand where the hell the impulse to make soft toys came from anyway (there must be a Frosted Flakes joke in there somewhere).

I have a bunch of things I want to do for my kids, my husband, my house, and even my poor dogs this new year, but I would like to open up an etsy shop for me.  We’ll see. I have to make a few more things first (and I have to figure out packaging, branding, shipping, blurb writing).  I have a whole year to cross that one thing off my list.

Two christmas presents done. I think I have started everyone’s gift, but finished a sad few. The starting is the exciting part; the hemming and trimming thread and finding a #@*% box to put them in is not. I’m desperately trying to get at least most of the gifts that have to be sent in the mail by friday, but I’m sitting here eating gingerbread cookies (stolen from my daughter’s St. Nick gift–thanks mom!). These two are from Sock and Glove, the japanese craft book (in english) by Miyako Kanamori. I have a few japanese craft books (in japanese) and I can follow all the diagrams, but always feel like I’m missing something. And I am–to fold an opening closed these are the directions given in the book: “Fold the back of the head like a caramel-candy wrapper.” It makes perfect sense, but how bizarre. These were a lot of fun to make. There was quite a bit of hand sewing involved, but they came together pretty quickly. The horse is actually a zebra pattern–same thing, right? That’s what I thought, but I should have made the mane longer to make it a little more horse like (equine, I guess). Oh well, he still cuddly. It’s pretty fantastic that these two came from two pairs of socks. There is a great pattern in the book for a sweater made from a sock as well. If there’s time (ha!) maybe I’ll whip one up for the elephant. I found this soft toy glove book as well with patterns for squirrels and bananas!