Rag Pets – Handmade soft toys from Helsinki, Finland

Foxy lady!

This is Kit.
Kit likes vintage things and she's very keen on mid-century design. She likes to spend her weekends browsing flea markets and antique shops hoping to find lovely little items to add to her collection. Kit has a really good eye for design.

(Click on the pictures to see them bigger in my Flickr.)

Kit is made out of orange wool and she's filled with rags and a little bit of batting. Her eyes are tiny black buttons and her belly button is a fabulous orange plastic button. She has lovely blushy cheeks and her nose is embroidered. The tip of Kit's tail is white velvet.

Kit wears a grey long sleeved T-shirt with multicoloured flocked dots on it, and a turquoise corduroy jumper skirt with metal buttons. The T-shirt closes in the back with velcro and the dress has a hook & eye closure in the back.


I took these photos at my grandparents', who I visited earlier this week. It's always nice to have a different backdrop than our white walls and the few photogenic nooks and crannies we have here at home. :)
Unfortunately a lot of the photos I snapped didn't come out too well. I had a rather meager selection to work with at that, since the upstairs of my grandparents' house isn't heated (it's used mainly for storage) and it was absolutely freezing up there, so I didn't feel like having a long photo-session. I'm glad that I did get just enough good photos though; it would have been a shame to have to re-shoot these here at home, without the cool old radio -which doesn't work, but gosh it looks neat!- and wallpaper. :)

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! :)