Christmas Crafting

So!  For once, this past weekend was fairly productive on the Christmas gift making front.  First up was a sock monkey from this pattern that I've been wanting to try for a while.  It never occurred to me to make a monkey out of socks other than the traditional brown wool ones!

I'm so in love with her.  She makes me laugh every time I look at her because her arms and legs are like 10 feet long!  Just depends on how tall the socks are, and I used full length knee socks. 

I wish I thought to take a picture of her bum, because really it's the cutest part.  And I have to say I'll be a little sad to see her go, as she's been good company sitting pretty on the sewing table.  But alas, she'll be heading out to Dallas in the next couple of weeks to start a friendship with my niece.

My next project was totally inspired by this woman who I recently saw at Indie Craft Experience in Atlanta, but remembered her originally from Bele Chere in Asheville, earlier this summer.  I LOVE her stuff, and her awesome monster hoodies were a new edition at the Atlanta show.  In fact, some friends and I bought one that looks just like the one listed for a friend who was turning 28 that day...and he loves muppets...and he loved the hoodie.

Some of you may remember the hooded towels I've made in the past with stuffed monster eyes,  but as soon as I saw this girl's horns, I HAD to try it.  I was worried about them standing up, but they turned out all right!  This towel will be for my littlest nephew of dinosaur pillow case fame.

Lastly, I've been wanting to make Tires a scarf forever, and even bought some nice, masculine, blue fabric AGES ago.  Well, I never did, and now I had some left over Christmas material, so what better than to make him a fabulous Christmas outfit!

Amazingly, for such a small dog, Tires has a really big neck, so I wasn't able to tie his outfit on when I finished.  No sweat tho...I just added snaps to the ends and it fits him perfectly.

Now I have to make another set of pillowcases, crush more potpourri for three more hotpads waiting to be filled, and I have to make the mate to my first ever potholder.  Just a plain square, but I attempted quilting and attaching bias tape for the first time.  Not totally awfully, but it's more of a potholder that only a mom (particularly MY mom) will especially love.  More on the potholder experience (maybe) later.

Another new illustration!

I've been working on a new set of illustrations recently for www.artflakes.com.

Prints of this illustration and others will be available for purchase within

the next month or so...I'll keep you posted!

Crafty Bastards Part Deux

Even tho many vendors have credit card capabilities these days, cash is still the way to go, and at this show, tons OF it.  The venue even had a handy traveling ATM bus just for our convenience...a convenience that lasted an eternity in line waiting for it to be convenient.  Waiting...

BUT, right NEXT to the ATM bus was this cupcake truck I mentioned before!  I didn't buy any, but it looked pretty inviting.

And not to hammer this topic to death, but after we got our money, we entered the crafting area, I turned around, and there was her tent...I wasn't expecting to find it right off the bat!

It actually took us around five hours to go through and see all the vendors.  After about three, we were all getting a bit floppy from the sun, lack of water, and need for food.  We saw several people walk by with pitas filled with stuff that looked and smelled reeeeeally good...so we tracked it down and got falafel. 

Which was, of course, delicious.

I don't have any pictures of anything I got other than this beautiful hand embroidered sweater with bird silk screens on it.  I had pretty much already reached my spending limit, but it was too beautiful to pass up.  One of my friends also got a VERY nice sweater dress with more amazing embroidery from this woman.

Turns out the pictures of me with the girl stranger wearing my same shoes and outfit were too dark to see anything, so I didn't bother.  But that's it for now.  Happy crafting!

Crafty Bastard Weekend

Gah!  This past weekend, the craftdactyls travelled from the North and South to convene in Washington, DC for the annual Crafty Bastards (wicked awesome) craft show.  Even tho our (my) sole purpose in going was to meet my crafting hero, it was also a wonderful excuse to meet up for a girl's weekend with childhood friends...and of course, to spend my inheritance craft shopping!!

It is no secret that I have become utterly smitten with the craft works (heh--I just thought of the 80s electronic band, Kraftwerk) of My Paper Crane, WHO by the way, is giving away a copy of her new book over on her website, so check it out.

Here I am totally overwhelmed by all the coolness, and trying to figure out what to buy.  My sister had also just asked me if I had figured out what I was going to say to My Paper Crane yet, and I'm shooing her question away.  I was trying to blend in with the cool.

I finally made up my mind and bought a carrot (which I've been wanting since last February), and a pouch made from her happy vegetables pattern.  As I handed her my things, I started panicking because I still couldn't think of what to say and was afraid of losing the opportunity.  Fortunately, my sister stepped right in and spoke up for me, telling her flat out that she was my crafting hero, which opened the flood gates, and My Paper Crane's husband took a picture of us to commemorate the meeting.

It was incredible!!  She was so nice (as expected), and invited me to pose as a mushroom face in her gnome picture, as many others had already done that day. 

My sister, friends and I had a wonderful day, full of art and craft inspiration.  At some point I'll post pictures of the cupcake truck and the girl who had the same shoes as me.  What were the chances?

New Illustration

"An Alternate Plan"

Colon

A friend of mine has Crohn's disease and recently had to have a portion of his colon removed.  Six days later, a group of us went to visit him for his 24th birthday, so in honor of both occasions, I decided to make him a plush colon to replace the one he had taken out.

Not having the vaguest idea what a colon actually looks like, I did a lot of google image searches first to see what I was getting into.  The best picture I could find is shown at the bottom of this post.  But after much planning, I went ahead and cut a pattern from newspaper, then made the front and back out of pink fleece.

Colons have multiple segments which I re-created by sewing lines across the front piece.

He even has an appendix on top of his head, and a bandaid on his forehead because he got a little beat up when he was taken out of my friend.  But all went well with both patient and colon, hence the smiley face :)

Something that stumped me for a while was making the ridge down his back.  I wanted to put some wire in it to make him bendable, so the ridge seemed like the best place.  After the wire was secured, the most difficult thing about the whole project was turning him right side out!!

It all worked out in the end, and my friend (who has a wonderful sense of humor) absolutely loved it.  He wanted to put his plush colon under his hospital gown the next morning and surprise his doctors with it :) 

Now I'm fantasizing about creating other kinds of plush viscera to sell in hospital gift shops for all occasions :)

Another giveaway!

Be sure to check out this very nice spotlight of my crafting hero, and if interested, enter the giveaway at the bottom.  I'm very excited to learn that My Paper Crane will be one of the vendor's at Indie Craft Experience in Atlanta this November!  For me, this will be like going to the Depeche Mode show of crafters.  Can't wait!!

Tiny Apron

It's birthday time again; this time for my little niece who'll be 5 in a couple of weeks.  Right now she is obsessed with mermaids, anything "pretty", and of course, the color pink.  I knew I wanted to make her something, but wanted to stay away from extremely girlie prints while still catering to her pretty preferences.

I came across this awesome (free!) apron pattern at Sew Liberated which was specifically designed for little kids.  Not only is it very wee, but she was clever enough to make the waist strap velcro to the body rather than burden little hands with tying bows.

I just love this fabric!!  I decided on it fairly quickly at Hobby Lobby, and without even considering how little fabric I actually needed for the apron, I inadvertently bought MORE than I needed, so I have plenty extra for future projects.

It turned out pretty well, except for the usual snags.  I'm still having trouble with stitch settings; the current tension on my machine is still too tight for top stitching, so it makes unattractive pulls on the undersides of things.  I also never worked with velcro before, and as evidenced below, I had issues with straight lines...(arrrgh!!).

I also wish I had added a pocket to the front so my niece could carry around art supplies or mermaids in it, but I thought of it too late.  Ah well, next time!

Giant Food Pillow Giveaway!

Hey, my crafting hero is giving away giant pillows that look like slices of pizza and stacks of pancakes on her site.  Go on over and post a comment for a chance to win!  SO awesome.

Christmas In June

My fellow craftdactyl has been mad at me for not posting in a while, so I'm going to try to make up for it by posting twice today.

Here is another project I've been working on lately - I went to a workshop on making felted wool animals at Craftland a few months ago, and absolutely fell in love with the whole concept. I bought all of the supplies I needed to start crafting my own little cuties, and here is what I've come up with so far...

I ran into a slightly terrifying set-back before the photo shoot - this fuzzy little miscreant...

....decided my poor polar bear needed a make-over!

Phew - could've been a lot worse, just needed to be tamped down a bit :)

New Art

Whoo! It's been a while since I've been able to post anything new - I lost my reliable internet connection a couple of months ago, but, AT LAST, I am back in business! First things first, here are a couple of new pieces I recently added to my portfolio. I meant for them to be part of a series of three, but thus far only two pieces have manifested themselves - I got distracted and started another series before I finished this one! Haha, that happens a lot :) Anyway, I was listening to this beautiful song while I worked on "Ghost Of My Old Dog" (I named the painting after the song) and I was just feeling like my poor, aging brain had been causing me a lot of grief lately when I created "Dunce Cap."

(Fancy frames can be found here and here. Thank you FrodoBabbs!)

Pillow case

It has only been since this past Christmas that I finally figured out how to use my sewing machine.  At first I couldn't even thread the machine without consulting the manual, every...single...time.  So with that being said, I was looking for an easy sewing project to use for Christmas gifts, and came across this awesome tutorial.

It totally worked out and was a great beginner sewing project!!  I mean I definitely had my share of tribulations from cutting big pieces of fabric to sewing straight lines, but I made five pillow cases for gifts and they all turned out well.

Anyway, one of the cases I made in December was for my little nephew who is turning three in a couple of weeks.  I came across this incredible dino fabric perhaps months ago and bought two yards of it before I even knew what to do with it.  Sooooo, I made him another one :)

And I have to say, this go-around was a thousand times easier.  Why I never thought to fold the huge pieces of fabric in half for easier measuring and cutting, I'll never know.  But it took way less time, and everything came out evenly and most importantly---the cuff matched up on the seam which meant I could go to bed in peace.  Aaahh!!

Dino Alterations

A good friend of mine got me a couple of Threadless tees for Christmas, and as rad as they were, they were both Larges, and sadly I'm a Small, so they've been sitting in my drawer for five months.

So I spent the morning altering this one!

Turned out pretty good.  The shirt had no side seams (how in the world do they make a tube of cloth with no seams??) so I had to cut the sides and take it in about two inches total.

 

Hemmed the bottom another two and half inches, then shortened the sleeves and decreased the arm hole diameter.  I love using thread that stands out from whatever fabric I'm working with, but there's something to be said for matching thread...darker colors show everything, right or wrong.

I'm also sure there's some other type of stitching that's better than a straight stitch for stretchy t-shirt material, but I have no idea what it is.  I say, straight stitch all the time. 

It gets the job done for now!