This familiar started out as a baby blue large dinosaur which was an in-house item from events by Steve M. As such, it came with a great back story. The creature was a necromancer's creation, made with various bits of creatures. Greyclaw is effected by his current keeper, which will come up later.
Not long after getting the item, I (Kelly) had a dream about what the dragon should look like. I asked Steve if I could enter his item in the QoH entry, and here we are.
The creature needed to be cumbersome, more dragon-like, and Frankensteiney. As I had never made a stuffed animal, I purchased several patterns to see how it all worked. At the same time I was looking at patterns, I was learning different type of fabric manipulations, particularly smocking stitching and Shibori, an ancient Japanese dying technique traditionally done with indigo dye. I could go on about this, but Ill sum it up.
One of techniques, Arashi, is my favorite. In it, you wrap the fabric tightly around a pole (or a bottle of wine) with string.
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| It's like a pole |
Another is done with pleating and folding. The underside of the dragon is the pleating, the tummy is honeycomb smocking inside out, interfacing and a lot of starch to get a paneled look.
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| smocking |
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| dyed to look necrotic. yum |
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| 3 different shibori techniques |
As for those patterns I bought? I never used them. I drafted the pattern on a LOT of paper bags, then cut the pieces to be patched together. Going with the story idea that the keeper influences the creature, I used fake plants in a couple areas. The horns are pieces of a fake cactus, and the tip of the tail has fake vines stitched to it, with a small flower bud at the very tip. Plus, I learned to set glass eyes!
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| Awww, look at the squishy face |
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| Bulbasaur's cousin? |
The creature is just over 3 feet long, and has large washers sewing inside each of his paws/hooves, along his belly, and in his tail. He is held in place with strong magnets under my garb. He is made to peak over my shoulder. So far, I am pleased with the end result, but I'll make a few tweaks. This project took about 2 months, easily over 60 hours.
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| Photo by View Staff |
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| Photo by View Staff |
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| Photo by View Staff |
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| Photo by View Staff |
I also need to send out some love to Wendy (Makayla of Folkestone) for putting up with my insane ideas and drafting mistakes. She helped me with brainstorming, fabric selection, and gave Greyclaw his adorable underbite.
