Sewing Marathon!

Maya and I like to make stuffed animals for Maya and also for the little kids in our family.  Yesterday she came over to spend the night after day camp, and we raced over to the fabric shop to get some terry cloth to make a chewable stuffed sheep for her teething cousin, A.  First we had to design the sheep, and then make a pattern.  This is going to be pretty simple, so we decided we were capable of making our own design.  I've been drawing sheep some the past few months, so this is our simplified sheep sketch.  For the body we bought white terry cloth and for the legs, face, and tail we bought blue terrycloth.  We'll embroider eyes, nose and mouth on it.  I would like to add strings of curly wool to it, but Maya thinks they'll just get gooey and stiff and pull ofF into A's mouth;  so we'll go with a more abstract version of a sheep.

We also wanted to make a fox for N, who is 4 and loves foxes.  We found a pattern on line for the fox since we aren't really up to making patterns for 3-dimensional faces.  We bought orange and white plush cloth and black pompoms for the nose and shiny black button eyes.   To warm up, we decided to make a custom designed fox for Maya, and here he is.

Maya ran and rummaged in our materials stash at the bottom of my closet and found some silky velour orange and black tiger striped cloth and some white felt.  She wanted to make a combination fox, tiger, and bunny.  The tiger material is grueling to sew with its stretchy slippery quality, but we stuck with it, using her treadle machine until the bobbin gave out and it was nearly 10:00 pm, too late to do a bobbin threading.  So we switched to my old Singer  and finished up the fox in time for Maya to crawl into bed with it at 11.  Next weekend we'll make the sheep and other fox plus a pillow for Maya out of an old tee shirt she saved.  Then I did some mechanical drawings for fun today.  So soothing, the absolute logic of ancient machinery, so undigital and unelectrical.  I love it!  Notice the eccentric disk on the bobbin winder (2692) that allows the long thingy to swing back and forth in perfect sweeps!