crafty mcgee

my little forest

- with monkeys, of course. Here are the ornaments I made for this year's swaps (both Amy's and Cake & Pie's). I think I caught most of the critters in this picture. In addition to the monkey's, there are squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits, owls and several other birds. They're gocco'd & embroidered, and are suitable for standing or hanging. Here's a shot of what the set-up pieces looked like:

I'm really happy with them. There's a close-up  on flicket. Since I made so many, there are two left over that are not spoken for. Let me know if you'd like to trade. Geez, you guys are speedy! I do have some unsewn blanks, so it is not out of the realm of possibility that I could stitch up a few more.

A hedgehog for St Patrick's Day

Only a day late! My apologies for my lack of posts lately. I had a very cool stuffie almost completed for the latest in my "Asian directors" series, when my cat unraveled it. Then she chewed up a couple of my vignette figures. So my swell toy collection, one of my favorite things in my house, has been packed away. I've been grumpy, to say the least, and not in the mood to work. Add to that some late winter health problems, a ton of work at my day job, and you have no blogging or answering emails from me. Sorry to everyone who left me messages! I do sincerely appreciate all comments. Then my grandma died last week, two days after turning 90. My cousin has blogged very eloquently about it over the last couple of days, and said almost everything I'd like to say. Thanks, Di.

Strange as it may seem, this event seems to have kicked me out of my funk, and I was almost able to finish this picture by yesterday. It still had to go into the box, though.

Taking out the dog(s)

I've been thinking of a boy & his dog vignette for a while. I thought it would be appropriate to post it today for the last weekend of the Year of the Dog. The other dogs are from my grandma's collection of stuff that she passed on to me a few years ago. She had a dog, but I don't think she was ever particularly fond of them. She just had a bunch of small ones.

This is the first piece that I used Stitch Witchery reprodepot carries it) and it works great! Much better than glue, the edges don't fray anymore. I remember having this stuff around as a kid, but I thought they had stopped making it.

Measuring Up

A few people expressed surprise over the past few months about how small my vignettes are in person. Others have asked me to explain the process of how I put them together. Today I'll combine the two. (You can click on any picture to see it larger).

   

Step 1. Transfer your drawing to the fabric. I like to use dressmaker's transfer paper. The yellow works well on white, I use the red for everything else.
2. I add the applique pieces with glue. I use one drop and smoosh it over the whole piece, then press it between a couple of pieces of wax paper for a while. I noticed that Reprodepot has started to sell "Stitch Witchery" - which is an iron-on adhesive - I'm thinking of giving that a try. The glue is really tricky to embroider through, though, so keep that in mind. Now your image is ready to stitch. I find it useful to keep a blue Clover washable marker nearby to draw in missing or pale bits as I go.
3. Embroidery done, use a bit of mild soap on a washcloth and gently rub the image to remove the drawing, and let it dry.

 
4. Make a sandwich of your embroidery, some quilt batting of your desired thickness, and a suitable background fabric. Cut a wide margin around the image, and turn everything upside down and pin gently. Be sure to leave the batting on the outside! (Sorry if that seems obvious, but I've made that mistake more than once...) Pin gently within the image, and sew around it to your desired image width. I usually use about the width of the standard sewing foot.
5. This is the part I'm still looking for a better solution for. I make little stands out of pieces of popsicle sticks. I glue a piece as wide as the entire sewn piece to the fabric, and then cut the fabric to fit on the bottom, and sew it to the piece by hand. It doesn't always work quite right. I've tried sewing the base on first, and then glue the stand, but that can get floppy. The quest for the perfect base continues....

And here's the finished giraffe, along with a handy ruler for measuring purposes. As you can see, the stand was a little too small for such a tall piece. Hope you have fun making your own!

Friendly Family Crafting

Here's a present for my brother that I was working on while I was unintentionally away. They are, of course, the main characters from his show Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends. I'm really happy with how they turned out. Craig liked 'em too. The beautiful background is by artist Carol Wyatt. You can see more versions of the house here. I'm partial to the black one, but I thought the snow was more appropriate to the season.

Here's another family project I was working on.  Yes, it's only a tiny vest, but it's the first knitting pattern I ever designed on my own!

Farewell to fall

It was great while it lasted, though it actually ended here about three weeks ago. It's already the wettest November on record, and it's looking to be the rainiest month EVER....in Seattle...I'll say no more.

This little set was fun to make. The branches of the tree are made with spray painted paper cups. They don't bend gracefully outward as much as I would like, but they take the weight of the fabric just fine. I was concerned that they wouldn't. The kid is another "stick figure" like the shark.

This is also a brief farewell from me. I'm off on my super vacation to New York City and Pennsylvania. I'll check in on folks and check my email, but I won't be doing any posting. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Happy Halloween!

Here are the only two creatures I finished of the big monster mash-up I had planned. Even more than usual, I am suffering from too many ideas and not enough time. I think there's a bit of cache overload happening in the ol' brain. The shrinky dink skeleton took three times as long as I planned, even though I knew going in I was shrink plastic challenged. I envisioned a whole chorus line of these guys. The mummy is good - I got to use up more cheesecloth. But I will leave it to all of your wonderful imaginations to add in all of his monster pals. With that thought in mind, have a great holiday, and don't eat too much candy!

It was a dark and spooky night.

Two zombie trees, an apprehensive polar bear and a mysterious robot found themselves on a lonely road in the forest. I'll let you guys take it from here.

This my entry for the Craftster Zombies & Robots & Bears...Oh My! challenge. This is the first time I've entered, I couldn't resist. I got the idea for the knitted trees from the book Knit a Fantasy Story that I blogged about way back in my first post, but I didn't follow the pattern, I just made it up as I went along. The bear is a new figure, he's so bright compared to the rest of the scene that he's a bit washed out. The robot is visiting from another vignette. This is also my official kickoff of the Halloween season, so check out the links to the right. I'm sorry they haven't been updated from last year. I have a few more to add (and other links to update) but Typepad is having "an ongoing problem with Typelists". They say I can recreate all of them from scratch, but I don't have time right now. I've got things to make!

illustration friday: farm

Squeaking in at the very last minute for this weeks IF. Embroidering pigs is almost as much fun as stitching chickens.

Under da sea: danger mix

This set turned out quite a bit bigger, scale-wise, than the others. The mermaid could pass for a giantess! Only the lobster is "normal" size, but he's the one I started out with (I had the B-52's stuck in my head after making that CD a couple of weeks back).

You can file this one under "It takes so little to amuse me": most of the figures are one sided, with coordinating fabric on the back. But I decided to make the shark double-sided so he could randomly menace other items in my home. For instance -

Shark vs Samurai - who will win??!! (My money's on Sanjuro.)