Horsies Are A Go!

SO!
Here they are. Softies for the sinister horsie army.
No WAIT.
Softies to make the world more awesome. Yah that's better.
My sister and I shall be sewing up a batch of these fellows to sneakily give away to random strangers via The Toy Society.
If you don't know who they are you should race over and check them out. We'll wait here.
(The deal is, you make something squishy, then you leave it someplace it will be found with a label saying "TAKE ME HOME". You post your "drop" on The Toy Society flickr group and maybe, if you're lucky, the person who finds it lets you know that it has a good home.)
Which, really, what's not super lovely about that?
Want to join us? We'd love it if you would. You know, even if you happen to have a hankering for a sinister horsie army.

What you'll need is:

• A spot O' felt. wool, acrylic, recycled plastic bottle, homemade felted sweater all are good.
• Some embroidery floss (floss?) for details and a mane and tail. (I've used it for all the sewing on account of my lazy)
• Stuffing/wadding stuff.

The first thing to do is print the pattern out. To make a horsie that's 3 and a half inches or so at the shoulder you need to open it with adobe (there's a button at the top leftish), then change the print setup to landscape, then when you hit print you need to select the page scaling option fit to printable area.
Ok, got your pattern?
Good.
Cut out your felt.
Now might be a good time to add embroidery details (like a super sinister face!) or an embroidery floss mane if that's what you're doing (details on that in a bit).

1. Sew the Leggies to the one side of the body "wrong" sides facing each other. Start dead center of the front leg panel and finish dead center of the back.



2. Use a blanket stitch. Or whatever you like really.


3. Once you have one side of the body done, flip down the "loose" leggies. Sew them onto the other side of the body in exactly the same way. You don't even have to change thread. This is what you're aiming for:

4. Next, continue to stitch up the neck and around the face. Stitch the ear panel into place the same way as the legs. Stop just behind the ears. It's stuffing time!

5. Poke stuffing down into the leggies. Use a pokey implement if you need too, as you're looking for quite a solid fill. Then poke stuffing into the face and head, but not the ears.
Sew and stuff from the neck down, through the body, poking and adjusting as you go; until you reach the horse's bottom.


6. If you're going with the embroidery floss tail then you need to cut your strands at twice the length you want your tail, then tie them tightly around the middle with a spot of thread like this:

then poke the folded, tied end into the horsie's uh, "tail area". Secure it with a few extra stitches as you're closing the hole. heh. "hole".

If your horse is looking a little splay legged then ad a few more stitched towards the feeties from the tops of the leggies at the bum and chest.

Now, about that mane. Here's my own "Mane-for-sinister-horsie-army stitch" But go crazy if you can think of another method. I think it's prolly easier to see than describe, so:


this is what it should look like:


you just repeat until you have the desired amount of equine hirsuteness. You could do double rows like for a puffier "do".

And there we have it. You guys, if this isn't clear enough then PLEASE do let me know. I'm hoping that my sister and I will coordinate our international Toy Society drop off dates, so if you'd like to get in on that too, then just give me a shout.

Castle Awesome - The Big Reveal

How the devil was your Yuletide? Ours was SUPER fun times. With PIE!

I finally put the last bloomin' stitch in the last bloomin' crenelation of Castle Awesome on Christmas Eve. The delay was because it was either take a break and make something else or toss the whole damn stinking thing down the garbage chute. On fire.
So I made some Very Weird Things, pics of the which will be posted once the Very Weird Things have been handed out as gifties.

As soon as I had finished the castle my sweetie decided that a photo shoot was in order, here's how that looks in his head:
Yup. Stormtrooper, Boba and a sand person. I LOVE it.

And here's what it looks like sans Lucas
That is Fred 2.0, notice his hair (mane?) and hoofs. And slightly skinnier neck. He's built for speed.

And here's the big reveal:



The longer version is HERE.
Opening gifties and lounging around and watching the bear poke his presents happily was HEAPS of fun. Also fun was how Crazy excited my sweetie was in the run up; Christmas eve he planned the big tree/present reveal with military precision and he wrapped all the Bear's presents so they were easily OPE-able by small monkey paws.

On Christmas day itself he rustled up a roast beast and trimmings and was ALMOST gracious about the catastrophic buttock kicking both he and I received at Monopoly.
Seriously, it was a brutal. Our chum Ian handed us our collective ass, but it was almost as if my sweetie had particularly angered the Monopoly gods by pooping in their knicker drawer. He was in jail 6 times. And he had a grand total of two properties. TWICE.

Present wise, I scored some very pretty earrings and a lovely sweater but more importantly, I had the BEST time with my boys AND my sweetie isn't back at work until after New Year's.
Oh and hey! did you see our tree? If not this is what it looks like:
and it smells yummy. OK. Done now.

Castle Awesome Update

As promised, the update on Castle Awesome.
So far I have got the inside all sewn up, some plastic cut up and a drawbridge made.
And Ivy, I have some ivy.
Interesting fact, my sister has the baddest embroidery skills in town. She totally totally does.

ME? Not so muchly, my embroidery has a touch of the maximum security prison about it; actually, maybe cons are awesome at the embroidery on account of all that free time. Who knows.
Anyway, here's the progress:

Felt? It'll Never Withstand the MIGHTY Trebuchet!*

You guys can keep a secret right?
Want a sneak preview of what I'm making my bear for Christmas? O do say yes! 'cause A'ly I'm dying to tell someone and two'ly if you have any super-clever ideas now would be the time to pony them up.

I'm making a felt castle. With a drawbridge and turrets! I snaffled the idea from here (isn't she clever? Yay for her!)

My version is a bit bigger, and instead of using cardboard I'll be using plastic, (because I hate the environment, though ironically, the felt is made of recycled plastic bottles).

I'm basing the basic shape on Bolton Castle, which I have renamed CASTLE AWESOME in my head. It's a late 14th century stone quadrangle fortress and it looks just like a castle should.
See:


So far mine looks like this:
Um, if you squint you can think of it as a post-siege castle. Heh.
But come back tomorrow, I'll be posting a picture a day as I go along. What I have made is THIS fellow:


He is Fred, the majestic charger. And he's MAJESTIC dammit and pose-able! He has a pipe cleaner skellington. Eventually he will also have tack. and eyeballs.
He's all my own design (could you tell, on accounta the bizarro?) and If you too have need of a majestic charger I'll be throwing together a tute over the next few days and if I'm feeling racy there will be a PDF.

*Such a nerd.