For the past 2 Mondays, I have been taking this awesome class at Gather Here with Abby Glassenberg (While She Naps). The class, Design your own stuffed animals, has been a blast. We came in with some ideas (or not) and Abby greeted us with freezer paper and tons of reference materials from catalogs to childrens books to animal guides. We got to see both one of her stuffies in pieces and a finished one in person and look at the way the seams were shaped.
Then we got down to drawing.
Now, I'm not the best artist no matter how many sketch books I've filled, so while the rest of the class were making manatees and hippos and narwhales, I created something sans limbs and I'm happy for it. The first class we went from a drawing, to creating a pattern and building a prototype. Abby walked each of us through adding gussets (in my case) to gussets and darts to create a three dimensional look. I loved it, and went home last Monday with a prototype and some homework.
Of course, procrastination is still my strongest suit, so I didn't get all of my homework done. So, I came into class last night and she went over the things that still needed to happen for people who needed to change part of their patterns. Because mine was so easy, there were no pattern changes, so I got to work with Sherpa fleece. I cut out pieces and carefully sewed them together. Maybe if I was quite so careful with the rest of my sewing projects they would look super cool and come out right more often.
I'm not quite done yet, but I'm getting there. I have an accessory that needs some ladder stitch (which is the same as mattress stitch except for fabric) and top stitching, and to cut and sew facial features. I probably won't get done until some time over the weekend, as I have deadline knitting to do as well. I already have ideas on how I can make more of the dolls, and some suggestions from Abby on creating the patterns. While mine was not necessarily as superbly awesome as the manatee made with quilting fabric (which created a beautifully patterned surface) or the roundness of the narwhale, I love it to pieces, and given the niche I live in (Japanophile who likes paranormal things), I'm sure I can make more of these either for just my friends or even for my sad Etsy store.
Abby gave us a ton of great tips from her favorite tools for stuffing (hemostats) to what she uses to pull a fleecy fabric like mine out of the seams (graduated awl). She had a lot of information about using fleece and designing and creating patterns with freezer paper. Of course, I have freezer paper ostensibly because I cook, but really because I had read about making stencils using freezer paper a few years ago. Now I enjoyed this enough and have enough ideas that I completely plan to make more items with my freezer paper. Though, next time I might graduate to limbs!
(I'd talk about what my design actually is, but I figure it will be a lot more fun to show off the finished one.)
