The blank stare strikes again

My mother was over at my house today, and for some unknown reason, I thought I'd show her my latest little projects. They're greeting cards made with old flashcards. The flashcards have sentences printed on them, for kids to practice their reading skills. They're very plain, fairly large, and are printed on both sides. Greeting card fodder!!!

So I show my mother a card I was working on - a card with some decorative pink papers as a background, then a flashcard with the sentence "Thank you for the pretty cake," inserted into a transparency sleeve that takes up most of the front of the card. I was so excited. The sentence was so big and so industrial looking, and so random. I waited for her response to my latest creative binge.

And then I saw it. The blank stare. The "I'm not sure what I'm looking at," stare. The look that says she's trying to figure out what she's going to pretend to be impressed with, but try as she might she just doesn't get it.

Finally she says, "Thanks for the cake? I don't understand..." So I have to explain that the sentence is thoroughly just a random thought, mildly amusing but not intended to be directly relevant to any particular situation. And I explain that the flashcard is two-sided and is destined to become a bookmark that can be easily removed from the front of the greeting card.

And I got the blank stare again, though a bit more concealed.

Argh. Ah well, I still think they're gonna be cool. When I get them finished, I'll post one out here and beg for compliments.

Introducing Mittens, plus a quasi-tutorial

Meet Mittens, the newest member of Liv's stuffed cat family.



She was borne out of a conversation between Liv and I, where Liv suggested that I make her a stuffed animal. Oh honey, I tell her, stuffed animals are really complicated and mama doesn't know how to make them. Then a pause while I remember reading about Elegant Bloggery's collaborative art with her daughter, and I think to myself how special it would be for Liv to have a stuffed animal that she designed herself. You know what, hon, I think we can do it after all. But we'll have to wait until Friday...

So Friday came along yesterday. My friend Jennifer (and her beautiful baby girl) came over and finished making ANOTHER fabric basket a la Pink Penguin. In between purse assistance and baby snuggles, I worked with Liv on her stuffed animal. It turned out to be a longer process than I anticipated; I didn't finish it until dinnertime the following day.

I took loads of pictures along the way, thinking that it might make a fun tutorial. Keep in mind that doing ANYTHING with a 4-year-old involves a certain amount of improvisation, so this is really more a fluid process than a step-by-step set of instructions.

Materials (very vague list)

Fabric scraps
Polyfil stuffing
Felt
Cute little child designer
Tons of patience



1. Start with a concept. For this, I gave my daughter a piece of paper and told her to draw the the stuffed animal she wanted to make. My idea was to use her drawing as a pattern, but her drawing was far too small for that. So I tried another tack, saying to draw the shape and size of the suffed animal to make. Lesson learned: Make your directions as specific as possible.



This is the final set of drawings we ended up with. She wanted to make a stuffed kitty (big surprise there). The top piece is the kitty's head, and the bottom is the body. Note the 7 pairs of legs on this cat.



2. Help your child pick out the fabric for the piece. I pretty much gave Liv free reign in my fabric stash cause I wanted to see what her little brain would choose. She chose very bright, very busy fabrics. If you want to ensure a more visually cohesive end result, you'll probably want to limit the choices some.

3. Cut out the basic shape of the stuffed animal from the child's drawing, and pin it to your fabric. In this case, she wanted different fabrics for the head and the body. The legs she drew were just sticks, so I just used the basic body shape and cut my own legs later.



4. Cut around the shapes you've pinned, allowing room for seam allowance. I added a half-inch all the way around for my seam allowance. I also cut out about a jillion strips of hot pink fabric (chosen by my designer) to use for the legs and the ears.

5. Here, I've stitched the kitty body to the kitty head with right sides together. The shapes did not match up exactly so I just kind of picked a middle point and stitched a straight line.



It was at this point that I noticed that the basic shape was a bit, well.... penile. I crossed my fingers that adding the ears and face and legs/arms would change that.

I also stitched together the many legs and the two ears. Right sides together, stitched on three sides, then turned. The first picture shows the shapes I cut, and the second shows them stitched and turned.



6. After you've got the basic body shape and the arms/legs, it's time for the face. I asked Liv to help me with the face. I drew the little nose shape, but I let her draw the shape of the white circles for the eyes. I also cut out a little pink heart, thinking that it might make a fun nose instead of the triangle. Instead, Liv decided on the triangle for the nose shape and the heart as a tattoo between the eyes. For the whiskers, we decided on white ric-rac.

I tacked all of the pieces down to the face with a bit of tacky glue. The glue makes it a bit more difficult to stitch through, so use as little glue as possible. Just enough to keep the piece of the fabric till you can stitch it down.



Notice that we've moved from 7 pairs of legs in the original drawing to just the standard 2 arms, 2 legs. That emerged when I handed her the arms/legs to place where she thought they needed to be. I think the transition from two dimensions to three brought that change about.

7. While I handstitched all the pieces down to the face, I gave Liv the legs and arms and ears to stuff. We used the eraser end of a pencil to get all the stuffing packed down in the long tubes.


Here she's examining the stuffing.

And here are the finished pieces.


This is the finished face, all pieces stitched down. This took longer than I had anticipated. I'd recommend watching some really bad TV while doing this step.



8. After all the pieces were stuffed, I added some stitching to give the arms and legs some little paw hands.

First, a horizontal stitch across -most- of the piece. (I left about 1/4 inch on either side of the stitch.) Make the stitch across the front and then the back using the same holes, then cinch tight. Repeat the stitch one more time for extra strength.



Then, start making stitches over the end of the arm/leg to make the little fingers/toes. Cinch 'em tight and repeat each complete stitch one time for extra strength. I made three stitches like this to give the kitty four fingers/toes on each paw.



Tie it off and take a ginormous stitch into the stuffy part of the arm/leg piece (as big as your needle will allow) and then trim the thread right at the fabric. This will embed the end of your thread into the stuffing. How cool is that?

9. Hey, who exploded the kitty???



Sorry, couldn't resist. Hang in there, we're almost done.

10. After you finish all the parts & pieces, stitch them down to the body. Here, I've stitched the tail down to the back of the kitty.



For the arms & legs, it's a bit more complicated. You have to stitch the pieces so they're all facing inward in the opposite direction of where you want them to be.

I know, it's counterintuitive, but it will all make sense at the end. You'll be stitching around the outside of this thing and then turning it out like a pillow. You want to stitch the various appendages so they'll get caught in the seam line and then be facing the right direction when it gets turned inside out.

Clear as mud? For example, I want the ears to point upward from the top of the head, so I've stitched them so the bottoms of the ears are flush with the edge of the head, but the ends of the ears point inward to the kitty face.

Here's how my little guy looked with all his pieces pinned on. (I stitched them down right after taking this photo.)



Oh, and when you stitch the pieces down, stay fairly close to the edge. I had planned on using a 1/2 inch seam allowance, but with all the lumpiness and stuffiness it turned out to be 1/4 inch seam allowance.

11. Pin the front and back pieces of the body together, with all the stuffed appendages on the inside. This is easier said than done.



12. Stitch around the edge, leaving a hole open to turn. Don't do what I did - I left the hole at the bottom where the legs were sewn. This caused a bit of a difficulty at the end when I had to close this hole up. If at all possible, keep your hole in a place where there are no appendages.

13. Oh my, did I really just write that last sentence???? I would rewrite it, but I can't come up with any other wording that doesn't sound equally as dirty - or worse. And besides, there's a certain wisdom to those words.

14. Turn the stuffed animal inside out and -voila!



15. The last thing you need to do is stuff the body and close the hole with a whipstitch.

I let my daughter do the stuffing while watching TV. Hey, if I can embroider while watching American Justice, she can stuff while watching Jakers.




And here's the final product!



This process has totally turned me on to the innate design sense that our youngsters possess. If you've stuck with me through this whole tutorial and make a stuffed animal designed by your own kidlet, I'd love to see it!!

Still feeling the afterglow...

Yay! to Idyllhands and Lisa for winning my little where-am-I-going blog contest! The answer was the Indigo Girls concert. I've actually been putting off writing this post because I'm a bit intimidated trying to write about such an amazing evening. I'll give it a whirl now, and just try not to be too wordy.

My "date" for the evening was my dear friend Jennifer. (Tony does not enjoy large crowds and is consequently not much fun at concerts.) We kicked the evening off with a quick bite at the Arkansas Burger Co. up the street from my house. Greek burger (with feta) and a huge helping of cheese fries. Mmmmmm.... There's just about no way that an evening can go wrong after that kind of self-indulgence.

And the concert didn't disappoint. From the moment we walked up to the steps of the concert hall, I could tell this would be an uh-mazing evening. I'd never seen the Indigo Girls live before, only listened (and sung along to) countless CDs and cassette tapes. I know I shouldn't have been, but I was surprised at how strong their voices were. The recordings just don't do them justice. They're not little mamby-pamby sweet high-pitched girl voices, they have strong, rich, beautiful WOMEN voices.

And the audience. Wow... It was like this big communal sing-along. "Power of Two" was like this huge, group love song. People stood up at their seats and, arm in arm, swaying together. I spied a few couples slow-dancing in the aisles. People sung along, either to their dates to their left or right, or to their spouses at home, lost loves, etc. It was gleeful and beautiful. During other songs, you'd catch people just sitting with their eyes closed, drinking in the moment.

They played -most- of my old favorites, along with some new music that I hadn't heard before. (The only song I really wanted to hear and didn't was "Secure Yourself to Heaven.")

I honestly could not have asked for a better birthday present. Actually, I DID ask for this birthday present. Good choice, if I say som myself.

Oh, and I got myself a concert shirt. I wasn't going to get one, but it was green with a big huge honey bee and oh, so cute. I am observing my 30-day rule, though, which says that one should not wear a concert shirt within 30 days of said event lest they look like a big huge dork saying, "Hey, guys, look where I was last night!" (In case you're wondering, the 30-day concert tee rule is a corollary of the airport vacation-tee rule, which says that if you cannot wear your Florida T-shirts on the plane home...)

On a crafting note, I have an interesting project planned with Liv for the day. I'll try to take some pictures and post tomorrow about it. No more details till then - I'm a tease!

I went to see a doctor...

of Philosophy... with a poster of Rasputin and a beard down to his knees... he never did marry or see a B-grade movie... he graded my performance, said he could see through me... I spent 4 years prostrate to the higher mind... got my paper and I was free.


hee hee hee - guess where I'm going tonight??? This is Tony's birthday present to me. I'm so flippin' excited!!! Yay!!!!!! First correct answer gets a little treat in the mail.

What a dream...

Wow, I haven't been very good at posting lately, have I? I guess I haven't been doing anything much that I consider "blog worthy", or I do something cool and then don't have a chance to post until three days later, at which point the cool accomplishment seems kinda like old news. Gotta get better at that...

The other night, I had the most powerful dream, I had to share.

A little context: For the last several months I've been a little all over the map creatively. Some of this, some of that, going one direction or another only to make a sharp turn to something else. Screen printing, bookbinding, sewing, quilting, cardmaking, scrapbooking. It's kind of random, but I've been trusting the randomness, knowing that at some point the artistic space that is mine will emerge out of the chaos.

So... in this dream I'm driving with my friend Scarlett in the neighborhood where I grew up. I never felt like I belonged there; it was a very wealthy part of town, and my family was the clear exception to that rule. But on this day, we're driving around and we see this road. I'd never turned on this road before because it led to the more elite portions of the neighborhood. So wealthy, so elite that there was a sense that there was no point even driving down the road.

But this day, we decide that we should drive on this road. As a lark, if you will. So we go on this road and it turns into the hugest hill. So steep that I have fears that my friend's little Civic can't pull it and will literally fall back off of the hill. But we do make it to the top. And at the top, we're surprised to find that there aren't super-big estates and imposing gates. Instead, they're small bungalows stacked on right next to another. I remember thinking, "So THIS is the most expensive real estate in the city? THIS is what I didn't feel worthy of?"

So we drive on past the little rows of bungalows, and now instead of little houses, there's this stone wall right by the road. Inset into the stone wall are a series of little niches, each one with a carved little house scene. I thought to myself how much Liv would love seeing these little houses, and being amazed that I grew up just blocks away and never knew something like this existed. What treasure there was to be found up here, on top of the steepest hill in town.

So we keep on going, now on foot instead of by car. We go under a little stone bridge and the wall gives way to a little grassy area. There were people here, and they weren't the super elite country club set I would expect. They were normal you-and-me types, but they were all having FUN. Sitting on the grass reading, talking with friends, playing guitar, painting. Then I notice the lake. All the kids were jumping and playing in the water, splashing and having the most carefree time. Again, I'm amazed that there was this group of people and this place that I never knew about. They seemed to exist in a world beyond the rest of the city. And by virtue of the fact that I had found this group, I was somehow accepted into the group. It wasn't elite. You didn't need a pedigree or money or the right introduction, you just had to drive up the right hill.

My little journey continued past the idyllic lake scene to some sort of old book company. The company was shutting it's doors forever, and all of their leftover supplies were up for grabs. Stacks of papers, vintage items, free for the taking. Being my hoarding self, I start grabbing up what I think I need. And it's at this point that the exuberance leaves, and my back begins to hurt from the load I'm carrying and I start worrying with the details of how to get my items back to the car. Clearly, I should have just stayed at the lake.

I woke up the next morning, intellectually and emotionally drained. What a trip I had been on during the night! It was all about taking chances, self-discovery, and not getting bogged down in the details. Perhaps trusting the randomness, not being afraid to look for my own artistic space, and telling me that the place surely exists - even where I thought it not possible.

A little piece of heaven

Tonight I was fortunate enough to have one of my most favorite foods for dinner tonight. A veritable Southern delicacy, some might say. And what is this most delicious food?

A tomato sandwich.

Doesn't that just make you drool? And it's made the RIGHT way, meaning vine-ripened locally grown tomatoes, chilled in the fridge before slicing, layered on toasted white bread, still warm and spread with mayonnaise, and finished off with paper thin slivers of cold, crunchy Vidalia onion.

Then again, maybe it doesn't make you drool. Maybe you're a -gasp!- tomato hater. I've found that one either loves tomatoes, can't get enough of them, or hates them and refuses to let them pass the threshold of their mouth. My daughter falls into the latter group, though I suspect with if she ever actually ATE a bit of tomato she might change her mind. Or perhaps that's just my wishful thinking.

There's also the tomatoes-only-in-spaghetti-sauce-or-salsa camp, which the group that my husband falls into. Either way, there's no chance that either of them will sit down to a tomato with me, which makes a meal like I had tonight a rare occasion.

A bird on a branch

After years of hating any kind of hand stitching, I've lately become obsessed with it. I think it's because it's fairly portable (perfect for afternoons at the park or at the pool) and the repetitive motions are very calming.

Up until now, the only stitch I've been able to reproduce with any accuracy is the blanket stitch. Then, at our last Drunken Bunkin', Denise showed me how to do a chain stitch. I've been wanting to practice it, but haven't had a good project - til now.

Last week (or the week before) Joanie at NiniMakes had a blog giveaway. To every person who entered, she emailed an adorable little birdie pattern. It was the perfect project to practice my chain stitching. Thank you Joanie!!!