Toy Dogs

It always surprises me when I'm able to turn something that starts out so wrong into something so much better. I had set out to make a Christmas present for someone in my family; I wanted to make a little dog out of wool felt that looked like their own adorable blonde shih tzu. He's a rough-and-ready dog despite his small size, so his coat is kept pretty short year-round.

I make a lot of wool felt animals for my Etsy shop, so I had plenty of wool felt and roving for the project and I wasn't planning on buying any materials for this project. When making a new pattern, I draw it out on paper, then I cut the paper shapes and trace them onto the felt, cut those out and stitch them together. I've been making patterns this way since I was a kid and and generally the finished product looks pretty much as I'd pictured it.

This dog was no exception; the color of the felt was perfect and the shape looked a lot like the real dog if he'd been completely shaved- voila! The trouble started with I started felting on the hair; I planned on adding some tan baby alpaca roving onto the ears and tail and a little on the face and legs...

It looked awful! The tan was way too dark, and the contrast between it and the blonde felt was striking. It looked ridiculous. I set is aside and considered throwing it away. But then (thank goodness!) I was struck by inspiration; I continued needle-felting the alpaca into the dog form, trying to make it look as much like real dog hair as possible. In the end I had a full-coated tan shih tzu!

https://www.etsy.com/listing/110805804/tan-shih-tzu-sewn-wool-felt

I was so happy with it that I made three more right away- each one has a different color coat, but I used the same pattern for all four. All of them are now for sale on my Etsy shop- along with a whole lot of other cats, dogs, squirrels, foxes, and more!

https://www.etsy.com/listing/110804093/maltese-sewn-wool-felt

https://www.etsy.com/listing/110804758/tan-and-white-shih-tzu-sewn-wool-felt

https://www.etsy.com/listing/110805316/black-and-white-shih-tzu-sewn-wool-felt

Fan Page

I finally set up my Autumn Rain Studio fan page on Facebook! This page mostly features items I have for sale on my Etsy shop (http://www.etsy.com/shop/sarangus ), but I'm sure that I will add photos of art projects on there as well.

Please feel free to visit it, leave a comment, and "like" my page if you're so inclined!
https://www.facebook.com/AutumnRainStudio

And while I'm at it, here are some of the things I'm working on for my shop right now:

I set up a nature table to showcase my creations for the shop. I would like to get a piece of light blue fabric (preferably silk) for the background and I will add some more nature- cool rocks, flowers, acorns, etc. before I take the actual product pictures.

New items for the shop. The cats and dogs are ready to list, but I'm going to add beads and props to the witches and wizard.

A close-up of the little dogs for my shop! The first one was a happy accident (an experiment that didn't work out, so it became something else); I thought that it was so adorable when it was finished that I just had to make some more!

Here are the witches (and one of the wizards) in progress. The top photo features a light grey wizard and large and small nature witches. The bottom photo is of two small and one large classic witch. I will be making brooms for the witches and wands or staffs for the wizards, and I will be sewing some glass beads on all of them. I hope to have all of these listed for sale in my shop by the end of the week.

http://www.etsy.com/shop/sarangus

Operation Elephant Restoration is Finished!

All right, I was all prepared to slice open the stitching on the back side of the trunk, stuff in more excelsior, and stitch it back up and I chickened out. Nope, just couldn't bring myself to make the cut. So it's going to continue having a broken trunk indefinitely.

I did, however, make new tusks and an eye!

Judging by internet pictures of other Steiff elephants I'm pretty sure the original tusks were plastic. I'm pretty sure that by the time I had access to my elephant the tusks were already gone; if not I don't remember them at all. I know that the eyes were made of glass because (of course) that's what the remaining original eye is. Since I don't know where to get "friendly plastic" anymore (if they even make it) and glass is not one of the mediums I know how to use, I decided to make all of the replacement pieces out of premo sculpy.

To make the eye look more like the glass one I first painted it with watered down black paint, painted the pupil in solid black, then added a little dark brown around the outside of the pupil. The paint and sculpy were both matte and the glass eye is very shiny, so I used several coats of clear nail polish to give it both shine and depth.

Here's a photo of the side with the original eye for comparison:

The tusks were simpler because they stayed white, all I had to do after sculpting and baking them was to give them a quick sanding.

Apparently the elephant originally came with a red blanket with bells on it; I'm thinking about making a blanket and maybe a headdress for it, but probably something fancier than plain red. If I do, I promise to post pictures!

More Work on the Toy Repair

When I started work on my little elephant the mouth looked like this:

This morning after picking up some apricot colored wool roving from Weir Crafts I got down to work, starting by sewing shut the mouth were the stitching had started to unravel:

Some of the felt had deteriorated (which is probably why the stitching had come undone in the first place) and there were a couple of moth holes in the wool, so a new needle-felted mouth was definitely in order:

While I was at it I repaired the end of the trunk, which was the same color as the mouth:

Now that the mouth is done I'll try to figure out how to add stuffing to the middle of the trunk.

Progress on the Elephant

Today I needle-felted roving to the bottom of the elephant's feet, covering the moth holes. I should be able to repair the mouth and end of the trunk tomorrow.

Childhood Memory

An old friend recently came back to me: a mohair elephant that all of my siblings and I played with at one time or another. My sister, being the oldest, claimed it when she had her own kids, but neither of her kids had any interest in the poor, shabby thing and it languished in storage for almost two decades. I can't say I blame my nephew and niece for not wanting to play with it; by the time we were done with it the elephant had a broken trunk- the end of which was almost completely worn off- and had lost both of its tusks and one eye.

I have actually been itching to restore this toy for years, so you can imagine my delight when it was given to me (actually my sister offered it to one of my brothers, and when he didn't want it she said she was going to give it to charity and I snatched it).

Here are some "before" pictures:

 Here you can see the one remaining eye and the sad state of the trunk.

The holes from the lost eye and one of the tusks.

The mouth is torn at the corner and the hole where the other tusk should be is visible.

Over the years the wool felt at the bottom of the feet was eaten away in places.

Looks like I've got my work cut out for me!

Completed Cat Bed

Sorry I didn't post this sooner- I went out of town, then I came back and finished the cat bed, then I went out of town again... Anyway, here it is!

I added burnt orange and dark brown roving to the tan stripes so it resembled the sandstone on a building in town that I like, and I felted in medium grey, black, and white bits to the pink areas to make it look like granite.                     

And- best of all- it received the kitten seal of approval!