And more toys

Yes, I make a lot of toys. They're fun, they're fast, I find having stuffed animals and the like around sort of comforting....

Here's the last of the crocheted critters I made over break. It's a pattern from "Edward's Menagerie" but I didn't use the spendy Toft Alpaca for that, in large part because I've found if you have a toy made of animal fibers sitting on a shelf somewhere in this climate....well, you may find that carpet beetles have found it later. So I use acrylic, which is inexpensive and widely available and also tends to hold its shape well.

It's a Highland Cow. Or maybe a bull or steer, at least there are no "parts" that would suggest cow-dom:



I was going to name him Ferdie, as a little riff on "Ferdinand" (The bull who would rather smell flowers than fight), but when I looked at him, I decided he was more of a Ralph. Or maybe Ralphie. So I named him that instead.

So here they are all now: The League of Small Crocheted Ungulates. (Well, Marina is either a half-member or an honorary member, seeing as she's a Hippocampus and therefore only half ungulate at best)



Yesterday, I did some sewing - a lot of chain piecing (and for part of it I may have had the machine misthreaded; at any rate I kept having problems that made me worry my machine's timing was borked, or something was wrong with the bobbin case....but I think maybe the misthreading could have been the problem).

I shifted over to make this up. This was a Spoonflower purchase. I'm not sure how active the artist is any more; the website address printed on the doll (diydarlingsdolls.com) doesn't have any merchandise listed as available, and the .pdf file of instructions that's supposed to be there is 404'd. But there was a video tutorial, and even though I groan heavily and roll my eyes at video tutorials (I can read much faster than I can watch), I'm glad I watched it. For one thing, I learned the proper order to do things. For the other, I would have done the lower body and the legs "wrong" otherwise and the doll might not have worked out as well.

(She does have a currently-inactive-but-soon-to-return Esty store - be forewarned some of the art on there may not be entirely SFW or SFC....scantily clad faerie types)

Anyway. I got the doll all put together. I'm glad I did, and I have some other "cut and sew" panel-things from Spoonflower I need to start working up. (Goal this year is to work down some of my very large "stash," both of yarn and fabric).

Here she is:

Most of Fenech's dolls are princesses, so maybe she's a Goth Princess. Her name is "Melody Dark." (I'm guessing, like many of the Goth girls I have known, her "real" name is like Amanda or Julie or something like that).

Anyway. She's fairly cute. Not shown in that photo are the lower body and the legs - what you do, is hem the skirt part of the dress, and then insert the legs (which are very long, and it probably would have looked funny had I gone with my initial impression before I saw the tutorial and sewn the hem closed, catching the top edges of the legs in them). Instead, you sew across the bottom of the waistband, and that's where the legs attach - which is more proportional and works better, and also she can sit that way:

I have a real fondness for these kind of flat printed cut-and-sew toys; they were a big thing when I was a kid and a couple of my favorite toys when I was very young were of this nature. (Back in the 70s and also in to the 80s, these were super common in the fabric stores. Most were like pillows - just two shapes that more or less captured the outline of the creature, and the rest of the details were printed on. These dolls are more complex, and in the 1990s, there was a line of fairy-tale dolls that I think Cranston Print Works put out that were on a similar sort of model - a separate skirt and separate arms and legs so there was at least a little mobility there).

I remember a lot of licensed characters were made this way - I remember many of the Strawberry Shortcake "Friends" were available this way, and I'm pretty sure they also had pillow-type Care Bears.

I'm still not sure if Melody is going to live on my sofa, or on a shelf in my bedroom, or if she'll join the very many crocheted Ponies on my bed. (I suspect she secretly is fond of the pastel-colored ponies, even if her Goth friends might laugh at her for that....)