New Pattern: Sun/flower plush

Just in time for spring, I've created a new pattern: Sassy Sun/Flower! Two patterns in one, with this sewing pattern you can sew a sun or a flower, add sunglasses to make it super cool too!

 

Sassy Sun is the coolest star in the solar system, with a sweet smile and bright rays, topped off with sweet shades. Swap rays for petals to make Sassy Sunflower, the softest flower in the garden. Use this pattern to make a sun or sunflower plush that is just what you want, using your own fabrics and including your personal, creative touches.

I rate this pattern at the beginner sewing level, which means that you have used a sewing machine before and are comfortable with basic hand stitches. 

 

 The finished Sun or Sunflower will measure:
9 inches wide front petals to petals
3.5 inches thick
9 inches tall

The pattern is available as a digital download on etsy or ko-fi.

Meow Wolf Snurtle Slippers

At Meow Wolf's Convergence Station in Denver, there is a truck called Snurtle that is covered in lights and you can sit in the front our enter the back and go on a trippy journey. I was tasked with turning that large vehicle into house slippers!

The truck is very angular with lots of triangles and lights, as well a various intricate images painted on the sides. I started with a sketch to figure how a foot would fit into and how to break down those hard metal shapes into soft fabric that could make up a slipper.

 

I use my sketch to draft the pattern shape. First building it out of muslin, then making a sample version in finish fabrics. I had worked with long chenille fabrics making some pet toys so I though that material would work well to replicate the feel of the cleaning fringe on the truck.

I used a combination of machine embroidery and appliqué to define the different sections on the truck. In my first sample I didn't have the intricate image that would later be screen printed on. I also added some rhinestones to mimic the lights.

The real truck has a light up antenna so I tried to replicate that with a removable light. This way you could snap off the light to wash the slippers.

 

 

Once the in house design team at Meow Wolf is happy with the pattern and sample I've created that is usually the end of my involvement. So what comes back as the final factory piece is often a surprise to me. There are a lot of design and cost decisions that come in to play working with the factory to get to a point where everyone is happy with the product. For the Snurtle slippers, they dropped the light feature, switching it out for a sequin ball that is no doubt simpler to construct. They switched out multiple panel piecing for a simpler construction with fewer pieces and a full back instead of the slide in slipper. They also printed all the images and dropped the front mirror pieces. Even with changes it's always cool to see the final result.

Factory Finals

Available in the Meow Wolf Store

Meow Wolf Scrappies bags

Many of the projects that I work on for Meow Wolf incorporate custom printed fabrics produced through Spoonflower. Depending on how many prototypes or samples I end up making with those fabrics, I always have some material left over. The projects have added up and I've been sitting on a good amount of material that I could only use with Meow Wolf projects. I pitched them making some little bags using the leftover fabric and they were into it.

I came up with a simple but interesting zippered bag shape that could hold pencils, make-up or whatever. The fun thing for me about sewing together these bags is that I get to mix and match all the fabrics so each bag is unique. The fabric are leftovers from such projects as Plotzo the rat, the Fridge Portal Backpack, Bearret, Fig Sloth and some soon to be releases concepts as well.

 

I'll keep making the bags as long as I have various leftover fabrics. They are currently only available in the gift stores at the various Meow Wolf locations.

Meow Wolf Fridge backpack

If you visit Meow Wolf Santa Fe, one of the cool features is opening the refrigerator in the house to discover a cool vortex that takes you to another dimension. I worked with the Meow Wolf product design team to turn that experience into a backpack.

The backpack is constructed out of off-white vinyl fabric, with interior vortex made from a combination of frosted clear vinyl with sparkle vortex overlay. It's fully lined with white water resistant rip-stop nylon. It's got a handle shape on the exterior but you pull the whole door panel open. I used magnet snaps to pull the door back together when you need it closed. The used spoonflower to print the interior door image onto cotton fabric, then combined it with the other door pieces.

I handmade a limited edition of 20 pieces. Then Meow Wolf will be getting them mass manufactured to keep them regularly in stock.

Open the door...

...to reveal the vortex. I illustrated the interior of the fridge door. It's filled with Ωmega Mart Products like Blk Mlk, Happles (happy apples), Powdered Dreams and Alien Juice.

Unzip the backpack to reveal room for your stuff.

Padded Inner sleeve for precious electronics.

Side pocket fits a bottle filled with the liquid of your choice.

On the front door is a hidden metal panel to attach real magnets, for an authentic fridge experience.

Top handle and adjustable shoulder straps make it easy to take this magical vortex with you wherever you need to go.

Cool Cat patches

Just in time for summer, I made a couple of cool cat patches. I took the cat design from the animal icons added some sunglasses and turned it into a plush patch.  I made a couple of color variations but since my daughter, Suzanne's current favorite color is pink, she picked the pink one for her shirt.

I used a combinations of fabrics to give the patches some texture, they have a base of plush, the sunglasses are corduroy with the lenses made out of satin for some shine. Then the cat features are machine embroidered on top.

Garden Baby Quilt

In anticipation of my second baby, I wanted to make her a quilt. The baby quilt I made for my first daughter Suzanne was based on Alec's animal alphabet paintings. I wanted to make another fun quilt, but didn't want to make the same alphabet quilt. Tucked away I've had a quilt project that seemed like it would never get finished so I pulled it out to see if I could turn it into a baby quilt.

When I moved from Oakland, CA to Vermont in 2010, I had a lot of scrap fabric that I didn't know what to do with. Instead of throwing it out, I cut out a ton of hexagons with the plan to make the Grandma's Flower Garden quilt from the 1979 edition of Reader's Digest Complete Guide to Needlework.

It was a great background project, whenever I had time would I would piece some of the flowers together. After I had a bunch I started connecting them, but I still didn't have a finished size in mind.

I pulled out what I had of the quilt and decided it would be crib size (45"x60"), but I also wanted to add some other element to make it more baby/kid friendly. So I made 24 different animal icons, based on these illustrations, and machine embroidered them into the "flowers"

In the spirit of using up existing materials, I grabbed some solid fabrics that I already had for the back.

Traditionally this quilt is pieced by hand to make sure all the seams line up and are very flat. I figured out how to work it by machine, it's not perfect, but it went a lot faster than hand piecing, regardless it still took me years to pull it all together.

The neat thing about giving this to my daughter is that it's made of fabric patches from all sorts of projects I've completed over the years. Included are fabrics from Alec's dragon shirt, Color swatch dress, Dia Des Los Muertos dress, Sea Life dress and many more.

Meow Wolf: Cat Wolf Purse

Inspired by the face of the plush Cat Wolf that I worked on with Emily Montoya, I designed and made a Cat Wolf purse. It's a small shoulder bag with an embroidered plush face, and the back is canvas with the Meow Wolf logo. They are currently available in the Meow Wolf Santa Fe gift shop.

A zipper at the top opens to reveal the black and white striped lining. It's the perfect small size to carry just the essentials when you're wandering through the portals of the House of Eternal Return.

Halloween 2017: Mon Mothma & Wicket the Ewok

For Halloween 2017, I wanted to make Suzanne a costume that she would be interested in wearing. She's almost 2 so she does have some favorite things but she doesn't totally understand Halloween or dressing up yet. We have tons of Star Wars stuff around the house, including several books of the original trilogy that she looks at often. She loves pointing out the ewoks, and since she's just the right size, so it seemed like a good fit.

Alec already had a great Obi Wan Kenobi costume that he wore to his college graduation. I chose to be Mon Mothma, both because she's awesome and because her costume was easy to put together since it's mostly a white toga. I did find a great costume reference for her on the Star Wars site as I had no idea the length of the white part or that she has a brown tunic underneath.

For Suzanne's ewok costume, I used the same base jumpsuit pattern from the year before when she was a log. I added sleeves, some length to the legs and made the belly color separation piece. Under the hood is a hat with ears, again I traced an existing hat for the base and added some ears. The hood doesn't have a pattern, I just draped some faux suede on top of the ear hat and used thick thread to mimic the handmade look of the ewok's hoods.

Once I made it, I wasn't sure if Suzanne would want to wear a costume at all. She does like ewoks so she recognized what it was when I finished sewing it. She happily put it all on, didn't mind the main suit, but didn't want to wear the ears and hood for very long.

Jen's Wedding Dress

My friend Jen got married last month in San Francisco. At the beginning of this year, she contacted me about making her wedding outfit. She's not crazy about dresses, but she really liked the idea of a jumpsuit. She included a removable skirt element to make it feel like a wedding dress not just a white jumpsuit.

She sent me some reference images of existing design elements that she liked. Then I made a couple different sketches putting those elements together. We did some back and forth until the right design came together.

From that sketch, I made the pattern and sewed a muslin version for fitting. I sent that to Jen for the first fitting. It's wasn't totally off, but I had plenty of fixes to make. We did a skype fitting so I could see it live and Jen made marks on the muslin with safety pins. She sent me back the muslin and I used that to alter to pattern to better fit her.  I pieced together the final outfit, then she came to visit me in August so that I could a final fitting in person and complete the outfit. 

Jen loved it and it was the perfect outfit for all the dancing she did at her wedding. This was my first wedding ensemble made for another person. I had to break out all my old college pattern making textbooks to make sure I was putting it together right, but I'm really happy how it all turned out.

Meow Wolf Neon Tree bags

I made another coin purse style bag for Meow Wolf. This one inspired by the neon trees in the fish tank. They're made of black cotton canvas, with a interior lining either with black and white stripes or chevrons. It took me so long to get to this post, they're all sold out now. I'm not currently making any right now but that may change in the future. As always Meow Wolf is an amazing one of kind experience, so go check it out regardless if I have anything in the gift shop.