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.

Adobe Toad Abode

I live in New Mexico where adobe homes are the norm. As a gift for a friend who both likes toads and grew up in Santa Fe, I made an adobe toad abode.

I thought about a lot of ways to make this before I started. When you look up toad homes, they often recommend just flipping over a terra cotta pot and making a little opening so the toad can get in.  I wanted mine to be more custom. I have seen square terra cotta pots, but I was worried I would crack it trying to cut the door out. Instead I went with making it out of plaster of Paris. I made a quick mold out of cardboard. It was pretty sloppy so when the house came out I had to sand it a fair amount, but that's part of the charm of the Southwest, everything out here is a little DIY. I painted it with acrylic paint, then glued on the wood vigas. For the final touch of Santa Fe, I made a chile ristra out of sculpey to hang from the vigas. Once baked, I sealed the ristra with clear acrylic nail polish.

It's winter so any frogs or toads that would be in NM are hibernating, but hopefully with its new home in Maine, come springtime, there will be a toad waiting list to live in this one of a kind adobe home.

UPDATE: Unfortunately due to poor packing on my end and rough handling from USPS it didn't survive the trip to Maine. I still like this idea a lot so I may try to make a stronger one in the future, plus add more turquoise and howling coyotes.

Animal Icons

I'm working on a quilt for my forthcoming baby. When my first baby, Suzanne was born I made her a quilt inspired by Alec's Animal Alphabet, it was the second one as I had made a very similar one for my niece first. I didn't want to make a third animal alphabet quilt that was the same, but I wasn't sure I'd have the time for a completely from scratch quilt. I'll share the finished quilt and how it came together once the baby arrives.

To personalize this new quilt I created 24 animal icons, which I used to machine embroidery on the baby quilt. The pieces on the quilt were small, so I needed to make very simple designs that would show up clearly on a roughly 1.5"x1.5" space. I decided to illustrate easy to identify animals and some personal favorites, plus a roadrunner since it's the state bird of New Mexico.

Knitted Christmas stocking for Suzanne

When my Grandma passed away in 2016, I inherited some of her half finished knitting projects along with some knitting patterns she had saved. Included in them was a pattern to make Christmas stockings from McCall's Needlework and Crafts September/October 1982 issue.

My daughter Suzanne didn't have a stocking and I found some extra time to use the pattern to make her a stocking of her very own.  Since the pattern was pretty old, I didn't think I would find any of Aunt Lydia's heavy rug yarn and I only had so many sizes of double pointed needles, I decided to wing it.  Luckily a Christmas stocking doesn't have to fit anyone I didn't do a gauge check, instead I just looked through my yarn stash, picked out some colors and got started. I mostly used Paton's classic wool yarn with a couple other random yarns thrown in.

I used the pattern as a starting point, but I wanted to include Suzanne's name in the design. I worked that out on graph paper ahead of time and just started putting it in while still working on the pattern design. I didn't have a ton of the original red so that's why I added in some green stripes. I ended up buying another ball of  red wool yarn to finish out the foot, it's not the same dye lot but I think it works.

The stocking is about 23 inches long from the top to the toe. It should be a good size to cram lots of little presents into.

Snaggy Plush Toy for Meow Wolf

Along with the Snaggy Head, I also worked on creating a full body Snaggy toy designed by Emily Montoya. I made a limited run of 20 pieces, but this one is also in development for getting mass produced for the Meow Wolf store.

Snaggy is about 14 inches high, made of long black polyester faux fur. It has some plastic beans in the body so it can sit, and the arms are floppy enough to pose into different positions.

 For the arms and legs, Emily had a very specific striped gradient design in mind. I knew I couldn't find the pattern as preexisting fabric, so I took her pattern file and had it custom printed by Spoonflower. This was my first experience getting fabric printed from them. Spoonflower has come a long way with all the material options since I first remember hearing about them many years ago. I got Emily's stripe and gradient pattern printed onto a polyester knit they call Performance Knit. It has a little bit of stretch but not too much which is perfect for assembling the limbs. I was really impressed by how vibrant the printed fabric came out.

Gamma Girls Plush dolls

Anand Duncan contacted me earlier this year about making little plushie versions of her Gamma Girls characters, Beta and Pi. Check out the Gamma Girls animated adventures in space at TeamGammaGirls.com

Anand had a pretty clear version of the type of simple, fun plush toys that she wanted me to make, which always helps. The faces are taken directly from Anand's illustrations, she drew the specific expressions she wanted and I just turned those into machine embroidery files. I mostly used fleece and craft velour to make them, with some little pieces of other fabrics to match the colors that Anand already had used to design her characters.

The toys are about 8 inches tall. Even though their shapes are simple, there are actually a lot of pieces layered to create all the different shapes for their outfits.

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.