Dearest Needlework Community and Hive Friends!
We wanted to make a special gift for @vincentnijman ‘s new nephew Taim – and I thought awhile about a kind of plushy/ soft toy/ teddy bear or the like… Indirectly-inspired by a wonderful book called Dirty Bow Wow and Other Stories, we riffed on paper first – Vincent exploring some ideas around noses, rabbits, button eyes (which he wrote about in this post, here).
And I went off with the recently-felted green woolly jumper – which had already had a second life after we bought it in Italy at the 50c market stall – and began sewing intuitively….
I first pinned a rough shape, loosely taken from a drawing I made beforehand, then cut and sewed around most of this outline – leaving space for the stuffing to be stuffed in, of course.
Because it was all cut from one piece, i.e. the head was cut between the arms – so that the arms will stay vertical when the figure is completed – the head immediately seemed too small for the required cuteness of the final character.
So I thought about how to add segments to each side of the wee head, to expand it. Again, I did this part intuitively, and so it appeared organically and without too much design – and in the end the original ear shapes were tucked inside the seams of this new bigger head.
So then it was time for the stuffing: a VERY long series of hours cutting the old grey sweatshirt into tiny pieces with the pinking shears: oofah! And then pushing them into the wee legs, the arms and the torso, then finally the head, and closing up the head at the last seam on the side of it…. Very exciting to have the form finished for the most part… It was a nice size, even without the ears yet, and a good solidity for a baby to hug and cuddle next to. It was still a fairly characterless creature though:
Vincent and I discussed the factor of the face ‘design’ for a while, and even drew some more ideas down - about noses, ears, eyes, etc. Got some button boxes out and went through the more natural ones, so a very small child could chew on them, using them as teething aids, hehe! I went off on my own again to muse instinctively, and came up with some ear shapes.
At first I wanted to fold the felted green material over on itself to give a kind of profile-formed ear, but then got the idea to have contrasting textiles, for the baby to have more textures to play with. I used the soft interior of Vincent’s old sweatshirt, for the inside of the ears: sooo lovely and fluffalicious!!
I attached the ears quite visibly, as I like to show something of the workings of a thing, when I create it: this shows that it is a handmade toy, and not something overly-refined or contrived: I like very much this kind of transparency in creativity – my paintings also show something of the underlayers and the drawn lines, below the final layer.
It took me some hours to get to this stage of the toy-making, and by the time I got to the ears, the first day was over.
I was very pleased to have formed a beautiful gigantic ear pair though! This changed the whole appearance of the toy, and gave a clearer idea/ path forward for the eyes, mouth, etc.
The mouth I had to wrestle with a while: I used the cuffs of the old grey sweatshirt, sewing along the centre of one horizontally, then turning it inside out – so that it would form a mouth kind of shape by itself. I loved it!! And though it took a fiddly hour or two to attach appropriately, it was worth it; once this mouth was in place, it was much easier to choose the right buttons – we wanted non-matching for a more fun look – for the eyes and final touch of the wee button nose.
Apart from some adjusting of the seams on the head, which were a bit bulbous outwards – I sewed them in more, to make the head more round and nicely-shaped – the finishing up of the billy-bunny was not so hard.
The right buttons came much more easily once the rest of the toy was in place, whereas beforehand it seemed really hard to figure it out. The overall expression seemed to form itself, as a painting tends to do; as if the character exists separately from our imagining it. Like it is a real wee beast, with a personality and lifeforce!
It was beautiful to deliver and gift the bunny, too. I am not sure that Taim is able to comprehend much more than drinking milk, pooping and sleeping right now, but am sure that the toy will be significant somehow, eventually. His brother and sister both took a serious interest in it, though they are older (8 and 10): they were fascinated with how it had been constructed – especially that it was made from old garments. :-)
It felt very good to make something that had this vitality, and then give it away immediately. That is not something that always happens when I make things, and it has a kind of inspiring feel to it: giving something away as soon as it is completed, makes room for lots more possible projects to come into being…. Rather than a finished piece sitting around and taking up space in my home and studio. I was even a bit surprised at how much I loved making a toy like this. It makes me want to create more – and to make things with Vincent!
