Monday, September 15, 2008

More Dragoning

I had the sewing machine out for my own super secret surprise that is a'coming, so Aleks and I decided to make him a little animal like I've seen elsewhere in many variations (here with crayons, here with stitching, here for profit, here is my favorite, here where I remembered I wanted to do it). So first, he set to planning out what he wanted in his sketch book. Again, he decided on a dragon.
He said it was to have five heads and every one of its arms would have a sword and every one of its heads would breathe fire.
The sketch completed.
Then he set with permanent marker to re-drawing the dragon onto a bit of canvas.
He filled the space more than I anticipated, which changed the shape of the final product a bit into a pillow rather than much of a stuffie. No matter.
We chose canvas because I had some, for one thing, and also because I didn't bother to buy any special supplies, so we made do with acrylic paints and sharpie rather than purchasing fabric markers or whatever it is you're supposed to do for this project. Clearly, I didn't read the directions. I'm bad at that. Then we set to painting. Aleks started, but I finished in order to get all the small little spots with my rather large paintbrushes.
He wanted the body green and we mutually decided on blue for the limbs, purple for the hands, yellow for the teeth and claws, red for the eyes and fire, and silver and black for the swords and their hilts.
The finished painting.
While I painted and we let the dragon dry, the boys painted with watercolors in their sketchbooks. It's been awhile since we dragged out art supplies beyond crayons, markers, and paper.
Aleks drew robots, aliens, and crocodiles for himself and for Bastian. Bastian clearly painted over Aleks' drawing, however (above).
Then they all sat drying in the sun.
After the dragon was dry, I cut it out along with a backing from the same canvas. There wasn't much room for a seam at all.
I helped Aleks begin sewing, but finished myself as we had trouble guiding it. He stuffed it full of poly-fill though.
Then I stitched up the remainder, which took longest as I had to go back and hand sew some places where the seam was too close to the edge. I've found that sewing is quite difficult for me as my right hand is still mostly numb from my hand injury 22 months ago.
We nestled the finished dragon in the bean bag & teepee cozy nook. It fit right in with the other monsters.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

That is so awesome! I love it!

Donna said...

Very nice dragon!

Miranda and Ivy love doing this, the last time we made them they went through a bag of stuffing with all the toys we made. We've done it with crayons (such as in the tutorial you linked to) and paint, both I think work just fine, you don't really need special fabric pens because I think it's a project that's more about the creation, letting the kid see what they can produce, rather than the finished product. And the ones Miranda made 6 years ago with acrylic paint and muslin have held up just fine.