Got A Series Of Orders That Came In - I've Been Busy

Finally got the large order done for the lady in California, and then two other orders came in - basically 3 dozen cat toys and 18 bags of catnip for one, and 2 dozen cat toys plus 60 bags of catnip for the other.  Now a Halloween order was emailed to me.

And here I thought I'd have time to work on the cartooning to get my stuff further along for publication, but that's not going to be possible for at least two weeks now.

The catnip picking has a priority too since it's going into fall and once we get that hard freeze that will be IT for the season.  Every day I'm going out to pick as much as I can, bringing back five or ten pounds of stems.  The driveway is back to having three tarps laying out air drying.  Last gasp for the nip.  Once it's gone there will be no more harvesting till next June.

Red Christmas Mushrooms As Cat Toys

Almost time to start thinking about making stuff for the Christmas events.  I do up a red Christmas mushroom that sells pretty nicely and has minimal machine sewing for it.

JoAnn Fabrics has a red cotton with white polka dots in the quilting wall section.  Half a yard of it will make a nice number of mushrooms (more than a dozen).  For the white stems I get a white on white print, from the same cotton section on their wall. 

 

Cut a 6 inch circle of the red fabric.  You will do a gather stitch with white thread or red thread around the edge, pull it slightly tight once you've gone all the way around, fill with fiberfill and catnip, then pull the edge entirely closed, making the pucker as tight as you can. The stem will hide this opening.

 

For the stem cut a white rectangle about 2 1/2 inches by 3 inches.  The 3 inches is the length, so fold the shorter side over in half, right sides together. Machine sew down the side and across the bottom. Turn right side out and stuff with plain fiberfill (no catnip). 

 

Set the open end of the mushroom stem over the closure of the red ball and hand stitch it tightly down in place, covering all the areas where the puckered top come together.  Done!

 

These can be stuffed without catnip and used as package decoration on presents too.

Chihuahuas

The faces I use for my bats have always seemed sort of dog like.  And with the big ears they look more like crazy Chihuahua dogs than ever. 

 

So -- new project!  I have key rings that I got for low cost a few years back and think that making up Chihuahua heads to go on them might be a good idea.  First I figured making a few drawstring purses would be best, but that would not only need to be the body of the dog but also at least two of the legs hanging down, then I figured why not just go with the main cute factor and stick to heads only, at first?

 

All I need is the tan colored fake fur to start. Something that matches up with the ear fabric.  I know the dogs come in a black with tan spots too, but I'm going to start simple and work from there.

Getting Some New Ideas For Bats

A quick google/images look for soft sculpture bats has turned up some new work being done out there.  One person does some NICE ones, very realistic, life sized baby bats that she/he made up as pins that go on your coat.  Well, the tiniest version (below) is artificially 'cute', the more realistic ones look a bit better.

Going To Try Making A Sculpy Face

The main problem is how to attach it to the soft sculptured body.  I want to do the body out of fake fur, and while I know that traditional dollmaking uses indented areas on the legs where you wrap the fabric around and stitch tight, the face attachment needs to be done differently.  I did one attempt a while back where I pushed holes on either side of the head to be able to sew it to the body but that didn't look right, there was no way to disguise the holes there.

 

However after searching online, Deviantart had suggestions that seem to be best.  I'm going to give that a try. I can get the E-6000 at craft stores around here.

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1: Shave down the fur away from the surface I want to attach the sculpey piece to
2: Before baking the sculpey, I'll score the backside of it with a cross-hatch pattern, to rough it up. The part I'll be gluing.
3: After painting the baked sculpey, I like to use E-6000 as my glue of choice. It's flexible and really strong.

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Halloween Witchy Hats

I'm making a batch of 50 of these, they're quick and easy to do out of felt and do make cute cat toys too though you don't HAVE to do them as cat toys.

 

With black felt fold the fabric so you can cut two circles at the same time.  You'll need to cut a 4" circle for the base brim of the hat.  Machine sew around the edge and trim it close with a scissors. That's your bottom.

 

For the pointy part of the hat measure off one 8" circle.  Cut it out.  Fold the circle in half and slice up the fold edge.  Fold each piece in half again and slice. This gives you 4 'pie slices'. Each of those is a cone for the hat.  So cutting one 8" circle and 4 pairs of smaller 4" circles will give you 4 witch hats.

 

To give it extra visual interest I also take some dark purple or blue felt, slice a strip 1/4" wide by whatever length you want, and sew it down around the curved base, leaving about 1/4" of black along the bottom since you'll be turning the bottom edge under to attach it to the other piece.

 

Fold the cone in half the long way, matching the ends of the purple/blue, and machine sew up that side. Turn and stuff. 

 

Hand stitch the cone to the flat brim by centering it on the flat piece, tucking the edges under and hand stitching the cone in place.  Done!

It looks like this, but with a hat band around the base of the cone.

Pumpkin Pie With Whipped Cream 'cat toy'

I made this last fall, it was absolutely wonderful looking, very realistic especially with the whipped cream dollop on the top.  It needed the whipped cream.  I made a few without and they looked pretty bare next to the ones with the cream.  The only thing I changed was the way the edge of the pie crust was done since I didn't want to hand stitch here. I just extended the length by 1/2 an inch more and folded it down then did the closure.

It makes a cute cat toy, but can be done without catnip as well.  The online tutorial is here --
http://smashedpeasandcarrots.com/felt-pumpkin-pie-with-whipped-cream-tutorial/

And a picture of it --

Hamster Pizza

Occasionally I find notes to myself tucked into folded fabric that I got for some project that got put on the back burner. Today was one of them.  Tan polar fleece, ruddy colored felt, a bit of two shades of green felt and a weird cotton print that was supposed to represent pizza sauce.  And on the note was a sketch of a hamster stretched spread eagled with large eyes (cartoony version).  It was my 'idea' scribbled down on note paper to come up with a catnip hamster pizza slice.  The hamster was to be made out of flat felt and have a white belly.

 

It looks cute, made me smile, maybe I'll follow through and make some but cutting the hamster out in that kind of detail would mean that it's not going to be a mass produced item.