GourmetAmigurumi

The mortal plush group is all finished and man am I brain dead!  Better pics to come.  I’m taking the rest of the day off to go antiquing

Mortal Plush progress!  These little foxes are coming along quite well, if I don’t say so myself   I think that 3 be May 1st is pretty realistic.

Here are bits and pieces minus the body.

And here is the empty body before stuffing.  The markers are for finding the center on the rnds where I attached the arms and legs so they line up with each other.  There is nothing more irritating than a cockeyed toy : P  I always find them pretty funny before they are assembled, so sad and discombobulated.

And here is the first fox all finished keeping the headless one company.  (I’ll take better pics of the first one later)  In the background is my stubborn cat.  She likes to sunbathe under my desk lamps and lay her head on the keyboard.  She would lay on it if I let her.

A few of you have asked how I plan to display them.  A good question.  I am not sure at this point.  I think they will be fine sitting up on their own.  If they get in to the show the gallery will have their own display stands so I don’t think I’ll need to send my own.  But when they get back it might be fun to make little shelves for them that have the emotions written on them.  Just a first thought.

Thought I would share how I am going about making the fox’s tail.

First I crocheted a 5 1/2″ long tube 6 sc around with G hook, a few sizes larger that I usually use, because the tail should be more flexible than the body.  Then I inserted a pipe cleaner with the end poking a few inches out from the end the I am going to attach to the fox’s body.  That way the tail will be pose-able and I will be able to use the pipe cleaner to help secure the tail to the body.  I am going to stitch it in place with yarn as well.

Next I cut a bunch of smaller lengths of yarn using the tassel maker on the left.  I used the small hook to attach these to the tail the way you would a tassel.  With this completed I used the mohair brush on the right to comb out the tail so it would be nice and fluffy.  I think I may have made the tail a bit too fuzzy, though.  Next time I think I’ll use my plastic mohair brush, it doesn’t frizz the fibers as much.

I have decided to share my ideas for the amigurumis I plan to enter into Mortal Plush.  It can be hard sharing works in progress.  Getting feedback is great…but sometimes, when I am in the middle of the process it is hard to keep my thoughts straight and remember my goals for the piece I am working.  Having people peeking in at my working process can be a bit distracting.  But it is also fun and I think I’ll give it a go.

So here are my ideas for Mortal Plush.  The concept behind the show is to make toys with obvious emotional expressions.  A very cool idea, I think, and well suited to my work.  Anyway, over the last month or so I went to a few gallery shows and was reminded that one of the key elements of  sucessful art is the presention of  a unified body of work.  Something that hasn’t occurred to me to do with my amigurumis.  I mean, I have made a bunch of snails, for instance.  But I haven’t made a large group of more complicated toys meant to be viewed together and compliment each other.  Up to this point I have seen my amigurumis as one offs.  I realize now that I want to make a body of work that relates to itself, not just odd pieces here and there.

For Mortal Plush I have decided to make a bunch of  amigurumis like Gilroy and give them different expressions. (I don’t know how many I wil be able to finish before the entry deadline, but if I like how the project is going I’ll make more that just those I enter) I chose 5 colorways to start and I’ll decide which ones to use as I go along.  You can see them here. I picked my favorite to work on first.

(the colors are frustratingly off) 

I hope to finish this little guy today.  He is turning out to be “bemused” I think.

Hello All!  Sorry for the silence over the last week or so.  Life can be sort of distracting.

Anyway, I want to give a great big THANKS to Goli at Craftzine.com for the embarrassingly flattering things she said about me in this article.  And I want to welcome all the new comers who followed her link to the site.  It is nice to have you.

Despite the distractions of “real life” I have been spending time in the studio.  Here are some of the things I’ve got going…

The bulk of the work for mermaid I mentioned in this post is pretty much done.  But she does need some embellishing and final touches still.  As you can see, she is a very grumpy girl.  Plus the photo terrible photo isn’t doing anything to improve her mood.  You can see more pics of her here. She has a curvy figure, which I am pretty happy with.  But I made so many changes to the pattern that I will have to give it run through (i.e. make another mermaid) before the pattern is ready for my shop.  Which will take awhile to complete because…

I have decided to enter Mortal Plush. The deadline it May 1st and I don’t have anything to submit yet!  My goal is to have 4 pieces to enter, and I have less than 3 weeks…So all else will be out on hold for the time being.  No, I am not saying what my plans are.  Because I am not sure how things will develop, but here is a little peek at my work so far.

I’m having another go at the mermaid.  This time around, if all goes as planned, she will have boobies and a waist.  I want to use more fanciful colors as well.  So she is going to have sea foam green hair with pops of neon, yellow eyes and a hot pink tail.  She may turn out looking sort of creepy, but I’m OK with that.

BTW, thanks to everyone for the input re: Violet.  I think I’ll sew a few sequins to her top.

Violet the mermaid is done.  I dragged my heels deciding what sort of top I wanted to give her.  And then once I summoned the will, XD, it took me awhile to come up with something that I was happy with.  To be perfectly honest, I am not thrilled with her bandeau.  It’s a little on the plain side.

Violet is the first mermaid I have made in quite a long time and like I mentioned before I didn’t write down what I did the first few times.  I plan on releasing a mermaid pattern in my shop sometime soon.  But I am considering Violet a first draft.  I really struggled with remembering how the heck I did the tail.  Now that I have that down I can concentrate on shaping her torso more and adding details the second time around.