Rag Pets

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! :)

Stuff about stuffing

As Winnie is showing in the above photo, that's more or less how much rags goes into each rag pet, in addition to a big lump of cotton batting. It's about one single bed sized sheet or half of a regular sized duvet cover, ripped to shreds. The older and more worn the sheets the better, I prefer the ones that are so worn you can almost see through them! They're so lovely and soft and they make the best stuffing. I get a lot of my old bedclothes from family and if I'm running short, I nip to the flea market for more. If the sheets have a very cool pattern, I save a bit to use for rag pet clothes.

I do most all of the ripping on the balcony, since it makes a lot of dust and doing it indoors just means more dusting and vacuuming afterwards. I'd love to have some machine that'd do the ripping for me, since it's pretty tedious work to tear a big sheet to shreds and I'm pretty sure my lungs disagree with all that dust too. We did try using a paper shredder, but since fabric isn't as stiff as paper, it didn't quite work. I've also tried to find "shoddy" (shredded recycled fabric) online, but the smallest lot I've managed to find was 5 tons, and while it'd be super to have that much stuffing at hand, I'm afraid we don't have anywhere to store it! If anyone should know of a place that sells shoddy in small lots, I'd love to hear of it.

Nekkid pets

Don't worry, the Terrific Trio aren't chilled, it was nice and warm the day this photo was taken so they had no trouble lounging on the sofa nekkid as the day I made them. :)

As I mentioned in my previous post, I don't much like stuffing. It's hard work and it takes up the most time in the whole rag pet making process. One thing that makes stuffing a bit more bearable is watching telly while doing it. Due to this I've gotten addicted to day-time TV and have thus discovered that Oprah and Dr. Phil are perfect companions to stuffing. I've also developed an addiction to audiobooks, because they allow me to combine two of my favourite things: sewing and reading. I'm currently listening my way through "Twilight" by Stephenie Meyer and I'm liking it a lot so far, the reader is really good. I go through about a book per week (if it's a long book) and I'm eternally grateful for LibriVox, my main fix for my audiobook needs.

An other thing that makes stuffing easier is that I got some gorgeous organic cotton stuffing from NearSea Naturals a while back. It's really lovely and soft, yet there's a nice "firmness" to it, and I know this might sound silly, but it smells absolutely lovely too! And you don't need to use as much of it as you would ordinary, cheap-o polyfill, since the cotton has less air fluffing it up. The Terrific Trio are the first rag pets to have the new cotton stuffing inside of them.