Rag Pets

The making of a super hero

Edgar is coming along, slowly but surely.
I'm having great fun working on him, although Edgar-work is occasionally punctuated by other projects and things that need doing, so he's not progressing super quickly. Still, I get to be the comics geek I am and I'm trying out some new things while I'm at it!

Edgar is the first Rag Pet to get safety eyes. I'd been looking for little safety eyes for ages and was lucky enough to finally find some, measuring a tiny 4,5 mm, through 6060 on Etsy (who I thoroughly recommend to everyone needing safety eyes of any size). I like the, umh... well, professional look safety eyes give and how easy, if a bit of a pain in the fingers, they are to pop in.
I also got some new polyfill at my local fabric store, expecting it to be that kind of crunchy, rough sort since it was really cheap, but it turned out to be lovely and soft with a great loft instead! Edgar now has some of this new polyfill padding his rag innards a bit.

Mr Edwards, aka. Super Elephant, like all great super heroes from Spiderman to Batman, is of course making his own costume. :)

Stay tuned for more Edgar Edwards, mild mannered office worker by day, Super Elephant by night — same Rag-time, same Rag-channel!

perhaps, maybe, possibly

I firmly believe that there is nothing that's impossible if you just try, and that there are no sorrier words than "could have been". So, with that, I've decided to try my luck and I'm going to submit an article to Stuffed Magazine in the hopes that it might get published.

I'm going to make a very special rag-elephant for my submission, as you can see bellow.

(Click on the image to see it better.)

I still need to get a few bits and bobs yet, but here's some of the fabrics I'm planning on using for Edgar:

Like I mentioned in my previous post, I sometimes find it hard to come by the motivation to work, but I'm really excited about getting Edgar put together! It's nice to have a real purpose for the Rag Pets I make, instead of them just ending up sitting in the living room bookcase waiting for the day I get my shop done. I've also had the idea of a superhero Rag Pet -being a bit of a comics & superheroes geek myself- rolling around my head for a long while now, so it's super to have a special something to make it for. And of course it would be absolutely awesome to have my work published in Stuffed!
Onward and upward! :)

To the future!

Now that we've entered a new year, and a new decade at that, it's time to look into the future. I've lots of plans for this year, both big ones and little ones, and it's exciting to have a new, shiny year ahead of me.

I occasionally find it hard to muster up the energy and motivation to do things and I was a little disappointed in how little I got done last year. So, in an effort to keep creating and to get things done this year, I made myself a chart to keep a log of all the days I do something creative, be it sewing, taking photos, drawing or even making a quick doodle to jot down an idea. Every day I create, I get to colour in on my chart and I hope it will be a riot of colour with nary a white square to be seen by the end of the year!

I'm also thinking about the future of Rag Pets, and I truly hope to finally get a shop up and running this year, our bookcase is fairly bursting with Rag Pets eager to move to new homes!
I also just re-drew my base Rag Pet pattern, the old one was in rather bad shape after years of use. While at it, I thought about trying something similar I did with the rag-snowflakes, and maybe drawing patterns for Rag Pets completely freehand. I really liked the sketch-like, more organic looking quality doing patterns that way gives and it's something I'd like to translate to the rest of my work too.

I'm really looking forward to the rest of this year and what it might bring!

It's Giveaway Day again!

This is Flakey the rag-snowflake. He's an unique little snowflake at about 22 cm tall.
Flakey made out of soft snowy white flannel and his nose is appliqued stripy blue cotton. He has little button eyes and he's wearing snuggly cotton gingham pyjamas with mother-of-pearl buttons on the back.
Flakey is filled with rags and wool.

Since going to bed early makes Santa come quicker, Flakey has donned his PJs and is going to sleep now in order to make the presents come faster!

To celebrate the spirit of Christmas and the joy of giving I'm taking part in Giveaway Day, and thus I'm giving Flakey the rag-snowflake away to one lucky person who leaves a comment on what they enjoy most about Christmas here on this entry between today and the 6th of December (that's our Independence Day here in Finland!). Every commenter will be assigned a number, with the first person to comment being number 1 and the second commenter would be number 2 and so forth, and then on the 6th, I'll randomly draw a number to see who Flakey will be going home to (I'm happy to ship internationally, so it doesn't matter where you live).

Check out the whole long, long, long list of other wonderful crafters participating in Giveaway Day, too, they're all listed at the Sew Mama Sew-blog!

The best thing about Christmas for me is the decorations, I put up my Christmas lights up yesterday while listening to Christmas songs and I'm really looking forward to getting a real Christmas tree to decorate again. I buy a few new Christmas tree decorations every year, with most of them being bird-related in some way.
I do like Christmas music a lot too, and I tend to listen to it pretty much every day come December. Oh, and Christmas food! I love Christmas food! Joulutortut (Christmas tarts) and glögi (mulled wine) and porkkanalaatikko (carrot casserole) are at the top of my list of things I want to eat at Christmas. :)

Added on the 6th of December:
Commenting is closed now, and a winner has been picked. Thank you so much to everyone who commented, you've made this a super giveaway!

Lights, camera, photos!

Despite yesterday being yet another bleak, cloudy day, I managed to squeeze taking photos of my Luv-able + Hug-able quintet in between gaps in the clouds. BooBoo, my photographic assistant, helped me with setting up the photo shoot and she kept me company as I bemoaned the lack of light. PhotoShop helped heaps too, since I had to use a mix of natural light and indoor light, the lighting was a little off and the pictures required a bit of tweaking to get the whites white again.
I did my best to make do with what meager daylight we got and I lit all the lamps I could, but I could have still done with more light. So, I was wondering if any of you have any tips on how to cope with darkening days and lack of light when taking photos?

Speaking of light, we finally got ceiling lights for our living room yesterday! It was about time too; we've been living here for three years and only now got around to getting lamps and having them hung. I know that lamps are a small, rather silly thing to be happy about, but I'm still super happy to have them. :)

Things to come

For some reason I thought I'd already mentioned this in my previous entry, but it would seem that the flu (which is still bothering me) addled my brain and I didn't. So, I'm happy to now tell you that I'll be exhibiting in the Luv-able & Hug-able show at Gallery Hanahou in New York this winter! The theme this year is "Medium and Mini", with works ranging in size from plushies perfect for hugging to teeny tiny little plushies. The show will open on the 3rd of December and it will run until January 9th, so if you happen to be in New York during that time, please go visit the gallery!

Here's a little sneak peek at what I'll be making for the show:

I'm super excited to be a part of this, knowing that my plushies will be on show in one of my most favourite cities and in awesome company too! Among the artists exhibting this year is one of my most favourite plush-artists, Christina Gordon of Jamfancy. I've been a great big fan of her work for ages, so it's very cool to have my plushies rubbing shoulders with hers, as it were. :)

Yarn Saturday

Now, I know it's not technically Saturday anymore, but for me, the day doesn't change until I've slept and it's morning again. And I'm sure it's still Saturday somewhere in the world.

Easter Saturday is called "Lanka Lauantai" in Finnish, which translates into "Yarn Saturday". Traditionally, the yarn produced during the winter was washed during Holy Saturday, hence the fun alliterative name for this particular day.
I had no yarn to wash, but I did sew all day today, which is also why I'm a bit late in posting this. I just got into that blissful sewing groove where there's nothing else but you and the sewing machine and the needle & thread doing their magic. I've been sewing pretty much all my life, and I am still amazed how a few pieces of fabric and some thread can turn into anything and everything you can imagine.

In this case, what those pieces of fabric and streams of thread have turned into is an Easter bunny, who will be properly introduced to you tomorrow when I've had time to take her photos. :)

Yummy craft loot!

I went to the Craft Fair today, and now my feet are aching, but I'm super happy! I really like this particular fair, there's always really great suppliers and crafters there and lots and lots of fabulous crafty goodies to splurge on.

I got some sorely needed air-erasable fabric markers, and I found brilliant big buttons! The biggest buttons are about 26 cm in circumference and I think they might become brooches and head-dresses in the future. The smaller ones will most likely end up as the same but for Rag Pets.

I found gorgeous, soft linen at the fair. I've been looking for linen like this for ages, and I'm so happy that I found a Finnish supplier with very reasonable prices. I had 10 meters of lovely un-dyed linen that I got from my gran (who got it in Tallinn), but I ran out of it some time back. I love working with linen, how it becomes soft when you handle it and even how pure, untreated linen smells.
I also got yummy printed quilting cottons from a shop I buy from every time I go to the craft fair.

New craft supplies always make me happy and inspired, and I already have lots of ideas for my new craft goodies. :)

Something different

I'm working on something new and it's all rather exhilarating! It's fun to get to stretch your creative muscles and to do something different every now and then. And what better time for new things than spring!

Spring always gets my energy up and sparkling. It's how everything is new again, and how there's so, so much more light than during the dark, drab winter. There's still snow on the ground here, but that doesn't matter since we had no snow last winter and this year winter actually feels like winter with snow and bitterly cold days and all. The snow makes the air sparkle during brilliant, cold days and it's a bit like living inside a giant crystal.
Still, I'm eager for spring to come. I've missed the sun during the winter (it would hardly rise at all before it already begun to set), and as I'm prone to come down with SAD in the dark months, it's like I'm now beginning to wake after a long sleep. I've come to the conclusion that I must be solar powered! :)

Any ways, I'm working on a new kind of Rag Pet, something a little different that I've taken to calling "Print Pets". I designed and drew and PhotoShopped all of yesterday and now I'm waiting for my test swatch to come from Spoonflower (if you're not familiar with them, it's a brilliant service that lets you design & print your own fabrics), eager to see how everything will turn out. It's nice to have a new project in the works! :)

WIP Wednesday

As you've probably guessed from the picture above, I'm expanding the rag-menagerie with a fox, and said fox is turning out super cute so far, even if I do say so myself. :)

I like coming up with new species of Rag Pets, drafting tails and ears, and trying out which type of nose will be best for each animal and so on. I think getting the ears right is my favourite part of the whole process, and I really like sewing & pressing them too. And it's not just different species that will be issuing forth from my sewing machine; I'm also designing different types of rag-cats from tabbies to siamese, and I'm planning different rag-dogs (I've only made the one rag-dog so far, so it's about time!) too.

The design of the Rag Pets has evolved a bit since the first ever rag-cat I made way back when. I swapped embroidered eyes for tiny little buttons when I found some at a local craft store (I should go back and stock up on them, really) and I changed the design of the nose from a tirangle to a much simpler Y, T or X shape -depending on the species- last summer. The Terrific Trio were the first Rag Pets to get tails, and since them, I've had great fun with rag-tails.
I'm sure the Rag Pets will continue to evolve a lot yet... I quite like to think of myself as a rag-Darwin! :)