A Dog's Age

About 13 years ago I made my oldest nephew a big stuffed toy for Christmas. He was six months old and I thought he needed an elephant. So I made him one using this pattern.
The next Christmas I made my niece a lamb. A cow looks like a lamb when you use the correct fabric. I grew up on a farm -trust me!   ;)

Two years later I made a spotted dog for my second nephew.

Not the first tongue cut from this piece of fabric.

My third nephew has a leopard but I couldn't find it when I was looking around my sister's house this past Christmas. It seemed impolite to rummage thru' the closets for the leopard when the elephant and the dog were in plain view.

My fourth nephew has had three Christmases but he still didn't have his animal. I blame his parents, as they have been away for every Christmas since he arrived on the scene. This has been weighing on my conscience as I like to treat all the kids the same, for better or for worse. This was going to be the year he was going to get an animal. Since N2 and N4 are kindred spirits I thought it would be ok if N4 got a dog too.

But as Christmas approached, I found out N4's family was going to be away again and my motivation dropped; I figured I didn't have to rush. I didn't.

I finally cut out the little beast in the middle of January when I went to visit my parents. I sewed the face togehter a few weeks later.

Interfacing to stabilize the fabric and a button to hold on the eyes.

And there it sat. For weeks. And weeks. Impeding any other projects I had because I felt guilty about not working on the dog. Does that happen to anyone else? You can't work on things you want to because of things you feel you should do?

At any rate, I called my sister and asked when would be a good time to get together so I could give Miss S her Christmas present and N4 his dog, even tho' the dog was still at the face-only stage. I work better with close deadlines. I got a tight deadline. She said she would be in town the next day and she would drop by with the kids. Yoikes!

I dragged a sewing machine upstairs and put it on the kitchen counter. It was a machine I found at a garage sale - a Singer 185K- but more on that later. I spent about five hours, on-and-off, fiddling with the tension before I could get started, but it worked like a dream after all that. And I finished that dog.

Its not a difficult project so I can't imagine why I was dragging my heels so.

Here is the dude. Finally.

N4 seemed pleased by his very, very late Christmas present and that albatross is no longer around my neck.

I have a question. Does it count as stash-sewing if the fabric was bought for this pattern and this specific project? Probably not, but at least there is two less meters of fabric and a one less bag of stuffing around.

And I can move along to other projects with a clear conscience.

A Windproof Toque

I went to visit my parents this weekend; the break from the DEEP FREEZE made it an opportune time to be on the highway, not hiding at home.

I took along the fabric for N4's puppy since my mother's kitchen table is so nice to use to cut things out. My cutting table is great, but I can only access it from one side, whereas I can go all the way around the kitchen table at the farm.

I cut out the dog, and I will blog about it when I have sewed it up.

I still had a about 40 cm of polar fleece fabric left and thought I should make my dad a warm toque. My parents farm and my dad spends quite a bit of time outside. It doesn't matter how cold it is, you still have to feed the cattle.

I used a basic toque pattern from OOP McCalls 9551. I cut two layers of the polar fleece and then a third layer from a felted wool sweater I had taken along. Originally I had planned to use just the sweater, but thought it might be a little scratchy, so the idea came to line it in the fleece. Then I thought the wool would be a little hard to clean if it was covered in hay and dust, so I figured I'd put some polar fleece on the outside as well. A felted wool sandwich, if you prefer.

I managed to cut the hat pieces out of the sleeves leaving the body for another future project. The sleeves on these sweaters are always hard to use up, so I'm glad I could use them first.


The rest of the left over piece polar fleece was used for neck tubes.

This pictures shows the three pieces sandwiched together, and interestingly enough, the real colour of the fleece. It is gray, not blue.


The three layers were very hard to sew through and became an utter gong show when when I tried to attach the band. I couldn't lower the presser foot, but there was enough pressure to keep things together anyway.

The final product is not pretty and looks like a helmet -and actually feels kind of like one too - but at least my dad should be warmer in the thing.

 

Since I'm trying to use up stash, this counts at 0.4 m used.