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 :)
