In/out or How Monstery Triplets can become a Baby-in-a-Pouch

Lately ideas have been coming from lots of directions...but I guess that's just how ideas always come...anyway, you can think of this post as a kind of improvisation on the last post I put up since the basic shape of the baby is the same as the shape of the monstery triplets...it's just a very simple shape that can be adapted to all sorts of things.

Nikki left a comment on my "triplet" post about how kids like to put things in and out of other things...endlessly really...and that's the kernel of the idea behind this baby in a pouch...just something simple and small and soft...easy for little hands to hold...and easy for them to play putting-into-and-out-of games with.

Here's our little friend nicely tucked in:

The template for the pouch is a "house" shape. The base of my "house" is 15.5cm, the sides are 5cm high, and a line drawn staight up from the middle of the base to the highest point of the "roof" is 11cm.

As you can see I've used different materials for contrast and a thin piece of wadding to give the pouch a nice spongy feel and a bit of thickness.

Important: when you sew the 4 cut out pieces of your pouch together make sure that you sew them in the order shown below...

...it should look like this when you've sewn the 4 pieces together:

When you turn your pouch inside-out make sure that you turn the top layer of material over the other layers:

I made the baby's blanket in the shape seen below...

...to avoid it becoming too bulky when the baby is all wrapped up:

Now the fun starts...in out in out in out in out in out in out in out in out in out...you get the picture...

Triplets

Just before the New Year I put up a post called Twins ...

and ever since then I've been thinking that monster triplets might give an interesting twist to the old matryoshka idea of having an identical doll sit inside one that's a little bit bigger...

so here are my monstery triplets...really mine and Yiscah's monstery triplets since we worked on them together...

they mightn't be quite identical...but that's monsters for you...

My Swimming Spot

"Once in his life a man...ought to give himself up to a particular landscape in his experience, to look at it from as many angles as he can, to wonder about it, to dwell upon it. He ought to imagine that he touches it with his hands at every season and listens to the sounds that are made upon it...to recollect the glare of the noon and all the colors of the dawn and dusk."

(N. Scott Momaday, Kiowa Indian, "Way to Rainy Mountain" 1969)

Have a Sunny New Year

This is for anyone who has kids at home on holidays and wants something to keep them occupied creatively...the little fella can hang around on bags, keys, mobiles, ipods, walls...basically wherever you want...he (or she) is really quite well behaved...


A Few Brief Points:

1) The flower is about 3 and a half inches across and is stuffed with wool fleece (which is a bit more expensive than polyester stuffing but is much nicer to work with...there's a much nicer feel and a much nicer spring to it)

2) The arms and legs are made with 28 gauge wire. For the hands I've used flower beads and for the feet I've used spaghetti beads. To hold the beads on I've simply curled the end of the wire (as you can see in the photo).

3) I've embroidered the eyes...you can do all sorts of creative things with sewing eyes...but for kids the small stitches can be a bit difficult...in my workshops the kids use wiggly eyes (which they love) glued on with a hot glue gun.

4) If you need any more help feel free to ask.

5) Have a sunny new year...Trixi

Twins

I've been thinking about twins...

partly because Nikki and Karen both have twins and often post about them...

and this got all tangled up with thinking about new projects for my workshops...

and I got to thinking...if twins can sometimes be "little monsters"...and I'm not saying that Nikki's or Karen's little ones are ever monsters...just that if twins can sometimes be little monsters...then it seems equally probable that little monsters can sometimes be twins...and like all twins they too must have that peculiar property of being very alike, and yet at the same time, being individuals who are very unlike each other...

Trixi's Quilts Part 3: A quilt for The Very Last Flower of Spring

Although this is my final post in 'Trixi's quilts' - (the quilt I'm making for Shira probably won't be finished for another few years) - this is actually the first full-size quilt I made:


We have this beautiful jacaranda tree growing over our back fence. In late spring it's covered in tiny purply-mauve flowers which drop all over the ground. The flowers and the dappled light beneath the tree remind me of the way I wanted to scatter the hearts to get a 'fallen leaves' or 'fallen flowers' effect:


I intended to give this quilt to Yiscah for her 8th birthday in 1996:


...and I wanted it to reflect the things that she loved at that time...I took this drawing from the first page in her sketch book:



Hubby was teaching her to play guitar so I lightly quilted in a guitar. I like the idea of having to look awhile at something before you can see everything that's there:


The materials are getting nicely worn through years of use:


This is part of a poem by the early Australian poet, Bango Patterson. We would make the poems into songs that she could play on her guitar...this one was her favorite when she was little:


This close-up shows those little details that you have to look for in order to see:


I quilted pictures of her favorite characters and objects - Snoopy, Woodstock, starfish-flowers, rainbows, etc - around the border of the quilt:


Flopsy was our very affectionate very intelligent very loved Angora rabbit...she, of course, has a square all of her own...and if you look you can just see the long grass she loved...and she probably would also have happily nibbled on that jacaranda flower:


You don't find this out till years later but it's just as much fun looking back and seeing all the things you put into a quilt and had forgotten were there as it is making the quilt in the first place. It's a bit like looking at old photographs:


The 8th birthday quilt was finally completed 3 years later than I planned...still, Yiscah never seemed to mind...she was actually born on the very last day of spring and always liked to call herself "the very last flower of spring"...somehow it suits her:

Little Known but True

Ever since my girls were old enough to rummage around the garden by themselves they have been entranced by fairies. Especially my oldest daughter, Shira, who is now 26 and works as an art teacher at high school. She was, and still is, always drawing fairies.

We used to make up stories for her about Ringwandl (who was a fairy) and her friend Winkybar (who was an elf). I remember she came to us once - I can't remember how old she was but she was still very little - and told us about a nightmare she kept having about wolves chasing her. Hubby (who is the household expert in dreams) told her that next time it happened she should ask in her dream for Ringwandl to come and help her. Funny thing was it worked. The next time she was cornered she called out for Ringwandl who just appeared out of nowhere and magically opened a door in the back of the cave where she was trapped and they escaped together. She was really excited to tell us that dream...after that I don't think she ever had those nightmares again.

All this family fairy lore came back to mind the other day when I went with a friend whose daughter goes to a Steiner school to make what they call "Wee Folk". Mine now belongs to her daughter Indigo. Making this "wee person" for Indi reminded me of a little known but true fact about fairies that Winkybar once told us. Fairies are always thought to love flowers (which they do), and are therefore, always pictured with flowers and wreaths, but what's not widely known is that many fairy tribes also value rusted iron very highly...that's right, rusted iron. According to Winkybar, they grind it into a fine powder to make the beautiful russet dye that they use for their clothing...and these traditional fairy dyes are one of the main reasons that they are so well camouflaged and so rarely seen in their forest homelands. Anyway, Indie was kind enough to lend me her little friend so that I could post a picture to correct the "flower-only" image of fairies:


And here's one of Shira's fairies from the family ethnographic collection of fairy tribes:


Needleess to say her drawings never tended to emphasize flowers but usually depicted fairies involved in very everyday chores...actually, they were usually things that Shira herself liked doing...


...and now that I look at them again I can see that Shira's fairies have always borne a suspicious resemblence to her...Shira is very petite and...well I'll show you what I mean...here are some 'self-portrait' drawings she did when she was studying: