First up. . .hmmm, lets go with the aforementioned patches. These were for the Disney alphabet ongoing swap. This swap was the D, E, and F group.
The whole group together (like I mentioned, I finished these last night so this pic is a bit dark, I tried to make the rest a bit better but I have little patience for pictures sometimes).
For the letter D: Dumbo
At first I was going to embroider/crayon tint this super cute image I found of a sweet baby Dumbo in the bath. But then I had another idea.
It's his magic feather!
This was such a simple idea I almost felt like I was cheating with it. But I like doing at least one non-literal patch for each group (like the Cruella Deville patch from the first batch) and this was perfect.
Don't fret, it's a craft feather not one I found while out on my walks (I see a lot of feathers in the cemetery but I can only imagine what's crawling on them or how they'd smell. . .guh-ross)
The backing fabric even keeps with the theme. Aww, mama and baby elephant.
Embarrassing fact: Dumbo is the only movie that can make me cry just thinking or talking about it. Not every time, but if I get really thinking about it tears will come. And not just a simple welling up thing. I can full out bawl just thinking about it. And, Dumbo is the only movie I ever saw my father cry over. That scene when they take away the mother (when she rocks baby Dumbo in her trunk. . .crap, I'm getting misty just typing about it). . .that's some hardcore Disney emotional manipulation right there. That's the stuff that effs with you as a kid and you carry that for the rest of your damn life. Disney is good for that, which is kind of dick move.
Phew, I need a second. . .excellent. I didn't need to grab a tissue but I was very close.
Ok, next up.
For the letter E: Evinrude the outboard dragonfly from The Rescuers.
(side note: what is it with typing rescuers? I want to add another 'er'.)
Anyway, Evinrude is awesome so I had to do him in full on embroidery. Which led me to wonder why I don't do this more. I was kind of intimidated by fill stitching but it's not that big a deal at all.
I used single strand for the majority of it (I did use double strand for some of the outline stitching but none of the fill if memory serves).
Varigated thread for the sweater because I didn't have a solid blue that was a close enough match to the pic I was using for reference.
I'm really over the moon about how it turned out. Even the pupils look good. I wasn't sure how to do them since they are so small and an outline stitch would make them look jaggy. So I just freehand fill stitched them and they're not bad at all.
After stitching up Evinrude I was in a total embroidery mood. But I was having problems deciding on what to do for F.
First I thought I was going to do Fifi, the feather duster from Beauty and the Beast. True confession, I didn't realize she even had a name it's been so freaking long since I watched Beauty and the Beast. But that idea was just kind of boring to me, mostly because there's not a lot of color variety on Fifi (all earth tones, *yawn*)
While I was trying to convince myself to just do Fifi and get it over with I started to get this word ringing in my head. Ferdinand. Ferdinand. Ferdinand. So I hit up google to see if there was something Disney that had the name Ferdinand.
BAM, there was.
F = Ferdinand the bull
This pic doesn't do him justice. That's Ferdinand just having a sit and sniffing a flower. He's crayon tinted with single strand outline. The backing fabric was a scrap from the other swap I'm about to show off.
Guilty Pleasure swap
This swap was a partner's choice swap. So you had to make something from the guilty pleasure (tv/movie) they listed.
My partner listed. . .well, I think you can guess.
*singing* Who lives in a pineapple under the sea. . .
This was NOT what I had originally planned to make. I was going to make an embroidered/crayon tinted (or maybe felt applique) patch of Gary the snail. But then I got thinking that was kind of a cheap item to send when we had around a month to make this swap. That coincided with a sudden obsession to make the pineapple house. I blame Funky Friends Factory for that. I've been checking out the patterns there and remember she had a pineapple. And it was a freaking fabulous looking pineapple. I knew I could probably rig up my own version of a pineapple but I knew it wouldn't be nearly as cool as the one at FFF, so. . .I had to get the pattern and make the pineapple house.
That lead to a whole debacle, too. FFF is located in Australia. Now even though I was only buying a PDF download (for a whopping $12.99) my bank shut down my debit card for fraud when they saw the charge. While I appreciate them looking out for me (they are super on top of the fraud stuff) it did put me in a pickle when, after I bought the pattern in the morning, I went to Jimmy John's for a sub and my card wouldn't work. I had just enough cash to cover my bill (so I was spared embarrassment) but then I did get embarrassed (a tiny bit) when my auto payment via paypal (to My Paper Crane for my plush of the month box) wouldn't go through and Heidi sent me a nice "oopsie, you no pay-ee" email. But I got it all sorted out and no harm, no foul.
Did I mention that I decided to get the pattern after I realized I had that fabric in my stash. I thought I had something that looked "really pineapple" but I didn't want to bother buying the pattern if I didn't have fabric already on hand I wanted to use. And it was just enough fabric, too. It was slightly bigger than a fat quarter but since the print is directional I couldn't just cut mamby pampy like I'm want to do (minding the grain, of course). I had just enough left over that I could have re-made only ONE piece should it get messed up. Thankfully, I had no issues with any of the pineapple construction. The details were easy, too.
The scale is kind of wonky (that door knob type contraption there is probably a bit big but it looks pretty cool so I'm ok with it.
All the details are felt and embroidery.
Porthole windows with french knot rivets and a little shine for visual interest. I only put two window on the house because I couldn't get any good images of the back of the house to know if it had windows back there. How many windows do you need in a pineapple anyway? Exactly.
Chimney. Again, the scale is a little wonky because the chimney is a bit largish but it works. I noticed (when image searching) that Spongebob isn't super consistent even with something very static like the house. I found images with only one window on the front and some shots of it were wonkier than other (guess that's because it is "under the sea". . .or the artists are just lazy which I can totally appreciate).
Oh, the chimney. It has a pipe cleaner and bit of polyfil inside it and the top is deliberately wider than the bottom. Eugene went nutso when I stole one of "his" pipe cleaners (because any and all pipe cleaners in the house are his, even if they have not yet been officially given to him to play with) for this project. Cats aren't much into sharing which should shock no one.
I think my swap partner will dig it. I know I dig it and that's usually a good sign.
I had to laugh when I saw the selvage on that green polka dot fabric. It's Cotton + Steel. I follow a lot of quilty blogs and all that and folks were popping boners over C+S and making these big ass quilts and fancy quilty things. And here I'm using the lone FQ I had of it (which came in my "color of the month" FQ bundle I did for a year) to make leaves for a Sponge Bob house. HAH! But I really like good quality fabric and C+S is good quality. I liked quite a few of the funky prints they had, too. Not going to lie. But if you've ever hung out around the hardcore quilty blogs a lot of the writers fancy themselves beyond frou-frou (and perfect) so this is probably far from a "worthy" project for the fabrics they shill. Especially when it's paired with some no name ass fabrics I got in scrap bundles. GASP!
What's next for me? Well, I still need to do that bacon and eggs tutorial (no, I haven't forgotten about it). First I need to make a Ninni in a Costume (for a swap) and figure out exactly what I'm making for my HallowMuertes doll swap. But I'll probably finish up my practice chameleon first (just need to stuff and assemble him) and maybe get a few more Fluff items churned out. I have jelly fish on the Fluff agenda and they're not that complicated.
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