New design in progress

Wow, it's been a while!  Over a month!  Partly this is because I've been busy baking (and reading about baking); partly, it's because although I have been working on a new design (above), I haven't been making much progress.

He is meant to be a bearded dragon.  I love his tail, and his body, and his head, but the legs have really been giving me trouble.  First I tried making them in fabric, which resulted in a puffy, 'inflated glove' look, which didn't rest on the ground well, and the seams of the tiny, skinny toes kept bursting when I stuffed them. Then I tried making the feet out of wire, with some kind of fabric covering over the leg and the main part of the foot.  This just looked lumpy and - well, rubbish really.

Then I came to a point which I always come to when I'm trying to make patterns, but which I've never really noticed before.  It's the point where I've tried everything I can think of to achieve the 'perfect', realistic thing that I have in my head (and in photos), and nothing works, and I finally accept that nothing is going to work and move on to looking at second-best options.  It's a weird moment.  On the one hand I'm desperate not to concede that point - because I really want my design to be fabulously realistic.  On the other hand, once I've accepted the inevitable, things suddenly get a lot easier and a lot more enjoyable.

So, fabric legs weren't going to work, I decided.  There's always the needle-felting option, but I'm not good at needle-felting, which means I would have to either put up with second-rate results, or delay finishing my dragon until I'd done some serious practice.

Then I thought about making the legs out of fimo clay - first with a wire armature and then, when that didn't work, just clay alone.  This is the point where I took the picture above.   The legs are sewn loosely onto the body, so they can move easily as he moves.  Unfortunately, fimo is rather too fragile.  As you can probably see, I went to put him down without looking and one of his legs got caught underneath him, snapping two of the toes on his right foot (ouch)!  

It's a shame because I quite liked the effect otherwise.  Possibly the legs could do with being slightly bigger, and rounder and chunkier, but otherwise I think they look quite lizardy.  There is a slightly strange romper-suit look about it - with the limbs being a different colour to the body, but presumably this can be sorted by painting the legs to match the body.

So, my next step is to look for a more resilient form of doll-making clay.

Last week...

Good morning!  It's been a very fattening week!  I've been sharing some of my food photos on Instagram, and since I don't have anything much to share on the bear-making front, I thought I'd share the food photos here too.  This first one is 'American-style' pancakes.

 As part of my job at the pub, I'm supposed to do the breakfast prep for the next day, including making pancake batter.  I was getting in a flap about it because it's a very different recipe from anything I've seen, and I don't know where anything is kept, or which bowls/spoons/whisks/whatever to use for what.  And I'm always in a flaming rush because there's usually so much washing up to do.  I wasn't getting anywhere asking people, so I ended up taking a covert phone photo of the recipe and bringing it home to practice (not sure I should be admitting that online).  It went alright - although I shall have forearms like Popeye after a couple of weeks of whisking egg whites by hand.  

The pancakes were good!  The blueberries didn't really work unfortunately.  I did try actually putting them in the batter, but because they're about twice the height of the pancake itself, when I turned the pancakes over, it sat on 'blueberry legs' as it were, and the base didn't brown as it should do.  Hmmm. Perhaps crush the blueberries first?  

Croissants are another recipe I've been struggling with - but I did get it right in the end.  My biggest mistake was starting from a recipe I found in a random old cook book, entitled Best Kept Secrets of the Women's Institute.  It turned out the recipes found therein really would have been better kept secret, because the croissant recipe didn't work at all!  After two attempts with that, I found a Paul Hollywood recipe via Google, and that does work, thankfully.

I also made florentines from Mary Berry's Ultimate Cake Book.  The recipe worked well, but I think I mucked it up again.  I used cooking chocolate, which wasn't very sweet, and the walnuts were slightly bitter (too old maybe?), so they weren't much of a 'sweet treat', as it were.  They did have chopped cherries and mixed peel in them too, but I didn't really notice them.  Next time maybe more fruit, a better choice of nuts, and slightly sweeter chocolate.

I tried making crisps - like they do at work.  I was convinced that they baked them, but I've found out subsequently that they deep fry them.  Anyway, when you bake them, it turns out they can either be pale and slightly chewy (which is quite nice when they're hot, but rather sad when they're cold), or crisp and much darker in colour (i.e. burnt).  I'm not sure either really works.  I might have another attempt, but I'm not sure it's really practical without a deep fat fryer.

It's difficult to know how to stay healthy, with all this baking.  I actually lost a bit of weight when I started my washing-up job - which was kind of nice - but it's all gone back on again now, and then some.  I have been jogging every so often, but its not always so easy when I've been working and my feet hurt.  I might dig my bicycle out again and try some cycling - a nice, British, sitting-down sport!

Anyway, I have been trying to compensate for all the baked goods, so I've eaten lots of these...

And finally, the sole result of my sewing efforts last week - the beginning of a new design.  I put this picture on Instagram, with what I hoped was an encouraging 'any guesses?' kind of comment, trying to get people to engage.  I got one response, from someone who told me it looked like a cat's arse. 

Note to self: never try to get people to engage on Instagram!

Stanley the barn owl

Here he is - Stanley the barn owl!  He looks very much like the prototype, but he's not the same one - honest!  Originally, I was hoping to find some interesting fabric for the the final version.  I spent £40 on various different things - lots of interesting hessians and stuff like that.  When I started trying to make the owl with them though, it was immediately obvious they weren't going to work.  Not only were they too un-stretchy and prone to fraying, but the hessian was more beige than mustard: it looked dull and didn't go with the grey lace at all.

I was a bit fed up at that point.  I did consider other things: some kind of smooth, short pile fur fabric would have been nice - but I've had my fill of using expensive fabrics and having to price really high, so in the end I decided to go with what I know works - i.e. the cotton that I made the prototype out of.

If I have time before the competition, I might try a version in the Schulte viscose - which is a really thin fabric with a fine pile to it.  I'm not sure it would work to paint that, but it would certainly add more texture to his face, which I think he needs.

I'm really pleased with his feet!  Originally I just painted them pale pink, and they looked like a pair of plastic feet I'd propped him up on - you know, like the potato-head toys, where you get a plastic potato and then all these accessories to decorate them with.  Then I tried sponging some white paint over the top, and it worked really well.

Anyway, I just about got him done in the time allotted (he still needs another layer of varnish on his feet, but that takes five minutes).  I'm now working on a Falkor luck dragon for the Hugglets show.  Hopefully, he will be finished this week!

  

New design - progress

Good morning!  I am currently struggling with an owl design.  Here he is in his latest (and sweetest, I think) incarnation.  I have been going back and forth on the shape of his head.  He is supposed to be a barn owl, and when you look at barn owls (lots of owls, in fact) from the front, they seem to have a flattish head - sometimes with a sort of centre parting or furrow.  However, when you look at them in profile, they have a nice curve to the top of the head.  Trying to get both effects at once is proving near impossible!

When we went to Bridge Farm Barns at Monks Eleigh recently, to offer some hedgehogs and bears at the Brett Gallery, I saw a beautiful handmade ceramic barn owl - a very friendly-looking thing, but with quite a strange-shaped head.  I remember looking at him thinking, 'he's lovely - really sweet - but there's something not quite right...'  Looking at my attempt now, I'm wondering if the artist had the same problem I'm having - if you put a curve in the profile view, his head starts to look domed from the front.

I am going to have one more go at it - although I'm thinking of saving this pattern.  I think I actually like him better with a domed head than with a flat one.  You can see the flat version halfway down my last post.

I really must get on with it though.  Having thrown off the shackles of commercial enterprise, I'm being far too relaxed about the timing!  And it's particularly important in this case because, whilst I'm practically done with the structural stuff, he doesn't look remotely barn-owl-like yet!  I think that's going be primarily down to the embellishment unfortunately (my least favourite bit)!

Orwell

Hey - he didn't turn out too bad!  This is Orwell - an unjointed bear made out of brown/blonde silk, with glass eyes and a clay nose.  He is filled mostly with polyester fibrefill, but I had to stuff his head with wood wool otherwise it just wasn't firm enough (a complication for people trying to make him from a pattern).

I love his bulky, realistic shape!  

Orwell is about 10" long, from nose to tail, and 7" tall, to the top of his hump.  He weighs 394g unpackaged.  (Excuse me while I confer with myself for a minute.)  The fabric cost £80 per metre, and he requires just less than a quarter of a metre.  Unfortunately I can't buy it in fractions smaller than an eighth, so I have to buy a quarter of a metre to make a bear like him.  Stuffing works out as £4.22; glass eyes as £0.68.  That makes £24.90 in materials.  I'd usually double this to get a sale price but £49.80 sounds quite steep.  How about £45 - my usual fallback option?  The crows and puffins are both £45.  Orwell has less detail, I'd say, but he is made from a much more expensive fabric.  I have some lovely orange/brown wool that I bought from the Frinton carpet-and-curtains shop.  Perhaps I should make a similar bear in that fabric as a less expensive option.

Alrighty - this one's name is Orwell and he is £45.  I shall put him on Etsy!

Strange-looking meerkat

This meerkat is taking too long!  I'm thinking I will make him as he is though, and there will be a mark II when I get some of the problems sorted out. 

Here are his mug shots...

Note that the arms are only pinned on, so they look much looser than they actually will be.

He has thick ankles, which is very uncharacteristic of meerkats - and no tail (even more uncharacteristic), but hopefully the tail should be a relatively simple job.

His arms are problematic - it is the shoulders.  To me when I look at a real meerkat, the shoulder bones are high and close together at the front, but it is a very subtle effect - a meer (sic) suggestion of shoulders.  The actual arms only seem to start at elbow level.  Unfortunately, when jointing two pieces together, it's almost impossible to make the joint look like a mere suggestion (unless you're using very long mohair).

I could simply joint the arms at elbow level - the range of movement you get is about right - but it looks very strange that way.

Anyway, I lost the pattern pieces (again), so I now need to take this one apart and trace the pieces.  Hopefully I will return with my firs mohair meerkat.!