This was supposed to be the fourth moustachioed plush (the others are here) but I just can’t decide if I like it or not.  It was definitely a pain in the butt to make. It took forever to try to make the face at least a little three dimensional and after I gave up I realized how I should have done it (though now I forget) and then all the fussy cuts.  He does have a little body that’s done and his legs are in pieces, but I just don’t know if it’s worth it to put him together. His face is so flat that it reminds me of a tiki doll. The moustache helps–it’s a bushy Tom Selleck number–but I still don’t know. What do you think? Should I sew him up and put him in the shop or scrap it and start over?

Errol, the chicken, is packed up and ready to go to Brooklyn.  He’ll be at Fact & Fancy, a new gallery/shop started by two lovely ladies from Etsy.  Rudolpho and Werner will be there too. I’m very excited about this, but right now I’m just tired.

good night.

Meet Olaf. He is the answer to the question: “Can this outfit be turned into a soft toy?”  The pants were mine a long time ago and the shirt I picked up at a thrift store for a different project.  I should have taken a picture actually wearing the outfit before I cut it all up, but there was a big, gaping hole in the shirt in a very conspicuous spot. I wasn’t sure if the pants would work, but my trusty little machine sewed through all those layers with just a little pushing on my part (and no swearing!).  All the pockets still work and I may whip up a little polka dotted toy for Olaf to put in a pocket, but he may be to serious for that.

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.