I love thinking in three-dimensions.  The challenge of making my sketch come to life as a stuffed fabric toy or sculpture is something I can’t resist.  There are so many options, so many beautiful materials and interesting techniques that make it all come together.  It just makes me happy to sit down and try.  And when it works…man, that’s thrilling.  I feel like I could explore softie making forever and never be done.

Each bird came about in its own unique way.  For instance, I was out on a walk with my kids in this little nature preserve behind our house and found a piece of tree bark. It was a good-sized piece and was totally intact except for a round hole that had clearly been pecked by a woodpecker. I brought the bark home and made a woodpecker to perch on it.

The flamingo was a dare. Could I balance a bird that was leaning over?  Yep.  Fun!

The chick was all about the materials. I thought it would be cool to sew a  bird from fluffy terry cloth.

So each bird has a story to tell about how it came to be.  I just try to be open-minded and not be afraid to accept a challenge.

Mistakes are part of each and every sewing project and they are hugely important, no matter how aggravating they can be at times.  Each bird pattern started as a prototype.  I drafted the pattern, sewed it up in muslin and then stuffed it to see how it looked.  Then there’s an editing and redrawing process to fix the mistakes in the prototype.  Sometimes the second draft doesn’t quite work either and more editing and redrawing is needed.  I try to constantly remind myself that even if something ends up in the garbage, it is not a waste of time.  I may not be able to totally fix it now, but in a few days or weeks or years the solution will come to me and I’ll try again.

And hey, sometimes I make beautiful mistakes!  The head on the raptor started life as a doll’s head.  I had it all sewn up and stuffed on my desk, but the doll’s body just never materialized.  So I sewed a bird body instead, attached the doll’s head, and voila!  A new bird was born.  And I rather like him, too!

I think it was an accident the first time it happened, or rather laziness on my part.  My machine is nearly 20 years old. It is a Bernette 330 and the Bernina dealer is really far away from  my house.  As a result, I was lacking in basic supplies for many years. For instance, I only had one bobbin. What a huge pain! One day I had a dark thread wound around it and didn’t want to unwind it to switch threads for a white bird because that would have been a big waste of thread.  I just threw caution to the wind and decided to sew the bird in dark thread. When I had it turned and stuffed I really liked that each seam was visible. I like that you can see the maker’s hand in the finished piece.  After that, contrasting thread became a regular design element in my work.

I had no problem giving away a bunch of my secrets in The Artful Bird.  It is amazing to see people making their own birds now, and I’m thrilled that my techniques can be used and adapted by anyone interested in fabric bird making.  I do have a plan for one more book. It is actually an idea that pre-dates the idea for The Artful Bird.  Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

I have been inspired for years by the four other fabric bird makers that I feature in the book and I really wanted to include their work so that readers could share in that inspiration.  I was so excited when all four of them agreed to participate. Having a conversation with each of them about their processes for making fabric birds was amazing for me.  It really was a highlight of the eight months that I worked on the manuscript and projects for the book.  I owe each of them a sincere thank you.

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Thank you so much Abby!

this was a lot harder than it looks.  And even though it only needs a few buttons (wheels, headlights, tail lights) I can’t bring myself to finish it.  I thought I’d move on from diggers and try my hand at dump trucks.  The body of the truck wasn’t so bad–a lot of confusing parts, but it worked out okay.  But the actually dumping part (I have to learn me some technical terms if I’m going to keep making these things) was pretty damn frustrating.  I used timtex (well something like timtex but fusable–it was all they had–and I just fused both sides to cotton batting) and holy crap is that stuff hard to deal with.  Granted I probably shouldn’t be using it on something so small, but I couldn’t figure out how to make all the sides of the dumper sturdy.  It comes together just like a bag with a lining would, except if your bag has an extra thick layer of stiff as hell interfacing then it turns out that the inside is smaller than the outside and the lining you made has to be remade smaller (but whoops not that small, make it again).  Turning that sucker out was such a pain that I had to take a break half way through.  But now that I’m looking at it a day later (and complaining all over the place about it) I’m starting to like it again.  So really I have to rethink the pattern–any suggestions?  But I am happy about on thing: it dumps.

I am very excited to announce that my shop is up and running!  The little diggers have been in bits and pieces all week, but I finally sat down with all the parts today.  And as my daughter built tower after tower after tower with her blocks, I sewed button joint after button joint right next to her.  Setting up an etsy shop was a little intimidating at first, not because of the site itself–it’s fantastic–but because I had to sit down and describe myself and what I make.  And make people want to buy it.  I have no idea how to do this, so I went with boring ol’ descriptions of the first three then when I got to the pink digger I laid it on thick.  I was only going to make three to start with anyway, but then I saw this little bit of hot! pink! vintage! linen in my scrap bag I cut into it without thinking twice.  Because how fantastic would it be if a cute indie rock boy out there gave his cute indie rock girlfriend my pink digger for valentine’s day.   I guess that’s an odd daydream to have, but I think that’s what mothers of small children do: daydream.  Most of what we say could be recorded and just played back over and over again all day, “Stop. stop. sit down. sit down. don’t play with your food. don’t rub your toast on your head. don’t put playdough in your brother’s ears.” I always wondered why I had to say, “MOM!” so many times before she heard me.  Now I don’t hear my daughter until the third or fourth mom.  So (to get out of this tangent) I’ve been day dreaming about this little shop all week and now here it is!  yay.