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 :)