I finished this dotee last night so I can get it into my mail run for Monday. Good news, I have all the packages I planned for Monday's mail run ready. I just need to have partners assigned for a scrap swap and I'll be ready to get four different swaps out. I may even be able to get two (or more) into that run, too, depending on when they assign partners (if it's promptly on Feb 1 or if it's delayed a bit) and what the weekend holds.
But I digress. I'm here to show off the Bathtime Dotee.
As the name suggests, the theme for this dotee was "bathtime". My partner's profile noted how much they love cats so why not combine the two.
Bath + cat =
One disgruntled pussy!
This is a better full shot so you can see the water drop tail.
It's made out of felt, a bit of batting, polyfil, and some netting. Oh and beads. The ribbon hanger and netting are recycled from other swaps I've received. The ribbon was used as decoration on some packages and the netting was tied around a dotee (but not part of the dotee--I'd never tear up a dotee to re-use it).
I just realized that if I hadn't had the netting I could have easily used a small (new, mind you) bath puff instead. Finally a real use for those (I've never been a fan of them as bath products, I prefer a nice rough loofa). That would have worked well for the theme, too. But I had the netting so it needed used.
The only thing I bought new for this dotee was the beads. But now I have leftovers for future dotees (I can see them making many appearances in tails). Speaking of tails, the tail on this one is kind of "meh" but I didn't feel like making a full beaded one using seed beads and I didn't want any "bubble" beads on it either. So felt water droplets worked well.
I'm very happy with how the face turned out. Once again I drew the image on the back of the felt using a ball point pen then stitched. It worked great. The only way this technique doesn't work so hot is if you're doing a design that's directional. I had that issue a bit when I made the Organ Donor dotee. The liver is backwards. Ouch!
I did have some issues with the whiskers. I think I was just over thinking it which lead to making way more knots then I'm sure were necessary. But the whiskers look decent in the end so that's good. I did have to make the face twice. My first go had a wonky nose. I made the mistake of outlining the nose then using fill stitches but not curling the fill stitches over the edge stitches, so the edge stitches got loose and warbly and just ugly. I couldn't tear them out without mucking up the felt (this color is kind of thin in spots) so I just remade the face. Yes, I wasted a bit of felt but it was only a piece about the size of a silver dollar (or so) so I'm not broken up over it.
I didn't take a snap of the back, but the bubbles do go down over the back. Not a ton of them, just enough to add some detail (and hide the attachment point betwen the head and body--it's a clean attachment but any time I can do extra hiding for attachment points or knots I'm all for it).
I just realized something else great about these dotees. I now have new Orignail Patterns to add to my library. The mailbox was an Orignail and so is this. No, they're not complex patterns that most anyone couldn't figure out on their own, but now I have templates cut so I could make different versions of both if the whim struck.
Ok, what's up next?
What's a Dotee?
Birthday Dotee
Wizard of Oz Scarecrow
Hat Dotee.
I have plans for all four and tonight I'm going to (hopefully) get What's a Dotee done and move on to either Birthday or Hat (maybe I'll work on both at the same time--both have similar design elements, so if I'm cutting circles for one why not both?).
Once those four are done, I have this list to work on.
Easter dotee (has to be egg shaped)
Beginner easter dotee (no specifics)
Purse dotee (this one's going to be a real challenge)
Pair of dotees
AND
Out of this World Dotee (the first swap I'm hosting!)
Ok, I'm done rambling about dotees.
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