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!!