"Aw, you guys made me ink!"

Continuing the showcase of my first menagerie of stuffies, I present to you: Speckle the spotted squidlet! Speckle is a little shy and startles easily, but once she gets to know you, she’ll always ask for a pat on the top of her spotted head. She enjoys lazily drifting through open water in the afternoons and dancing with starfish into the night.

When I was sketching up my little squidlet, I played with many cephalopod ideas, but I thought a simple baby octo would be good for a learning project. It seems octopi have been sort of “trendy” for quite some time now…I see them in tattoos quite often and I see this necklace all over the place.

I’m not usually one to follow trends, but I must say I have had some cephalopod fancies, including that necklace. Actually, I’ve been wanting to make one idea a reality for quite some time now but am not sure how to do it: I want to make an octopus necklace by softening two dinner forks and molding the tines to make tentacles. Then I’ll glue them together and naturally put a couple of googly eyes on them. I just need a means to get the flatware soft enough to mold. Any ideas, anyone?

Moving on from that tangent, I think my tiny squidlet was largely a success. As is my fashion, I used a technique from a pattern I had made before: this free felt toadstool pattern from Cathy Gaubert’s e-book, Fa la la la felt.

I just cut a circle in fabric, did a running stitch around the circumference in embroidery thread, then pulled it tight into a little drawstring bag, just like the toadstool head! Then I stuffed her head with stuffin,’ made her little stubby tentacles and attached them, and added a little pentagonal cover so her underside was smooth. After admiring my work for a bit, I realized that because I sewed on her eyes before I attached the tentacles, her eyes were a little too far down, so I had to take a few minutes to re-position them higher on her head. I originally only gave her the two eyes, but in my sketch, my squidlet had a shy little smile that I liked so much I decided it needed to be included. I’m glad I did it, but I feel like it would show up better if it was in felt instead of embroidery thread. Next time.

Thanks, Taty and Alison for providing the castoff clothes to make this little cutie! The spots are from Alison’s old pajama shorts and the grey underside is an old band t-shirt of Taty’s. I’d say 90% of the fabric I use is from old clothes, and most of that is from Alison and Taty. Thanks again for being my fabric source, guys!

And with that, I think I shall go play with my new spotted friend and work on making a few more stuffie companions. Check back soon…I’ve still got a backlog of stuffies to introduce to you!

Meet Whally

My apologies for getting you all excited and then delaying the update. I was waiting on a decent camera with which to capture the squeal-worthy loveliness of my new friends. I have been busy since last we spoke, sketching and designing and stitching and such.

Here is the first of my menagerie:

Meet Whally! Whally enjoys poking around the arctic waters with his ivory horn, making friends with fishies and sometimes eating them accidentally. He propels himself through the icy sea with his powerful tail and likes to flap his stumpy fins when he’s happy.

I couldn’t have imagined anything better would come of my little sketches when Whally finally came into being. I still can’t look at him without squealing. Surprisingly, it looks like the first pattern I drafted for him won’t need any changes at all. He was surprisingly simple to make, although he did take a few hours.

I searched my fabric/old clothes stash and found some hefty grey twill for his body that went perfectly with some striped upholstery fabric for his belly, both of which I bought at the East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse (a place I will probably mention quite a few times in this blog) a while ago. I was sort of planning on making pillows or curtains out of this, but Whally was definitely a superior choice.

After choosing fabric, I looked at my sketch and drafted a pattern on some of that paper that comes in shipped boxes sometimes…I like that it’s big enough for pattern-making and also recycled and free! I haven’t made many patterns of my own, but I have learned a ton from making stuffies from patterns and tutorials I find online. For instance, I could see that Whally’s shape could use some of the principles of these fabric birds from Spool’s free pattern. If I were to give some advice to people who want to start making their own stuffies, I’d say make several from others’ patterns first. That way you acquire valuable skills you can apply to your own designs!

The horn was probably the most difficult part, as I knew I wanted it to be sturdy enough to stand out from his head like, well, a horn (apparently on Narwhals they’re called “tusks,” but we all know that since they’re the unicorns of the sea, they have horns). I decided to roll up some felt into a cone shape and sew that together, and it was fairly simple once I figured out what shape to cut the felt so that it would roll into that cone shape. Next time, I may add some ribbon in a spiral pattern to get a different effect.

Overall, I think Whally is a great success, and I’m happy to have a new friend around to cuddle. I plan on updating you on the other friends I’ve made very shortly, so check back soon!

Hullo, there.

Well hullo, there. Welcome.

I suppose when most people start blogs, they say a little about why they’re writing, what their purpose is. I’m not sure exactly if anything has real “purpose,” but these are my hopes for it:

I started Anchors Aflight because I have an unsquelchable drive to create, and I thought I might have a place to share those things I create here, and to sell them on my Etsy store there.

Making things is one of those activities that makes me the happiest. When I’m doing anything creative, I get this ecstatic ball of energy in my chest that oscillates between my ribs. I hope to share that kind of feeling with you, even if it is just a twinge of happy, a little squeal of delight, a sigh of awe, or inspiration for projects of your own.

I am a maker of many things, and I am constantly elated to learn new creative skills. Much of my joy from learning stems from my pride in teaching myself and solving problems as they arise: How do I attach fasteners to hair bows? What’s the best way to close up and finish a stuffie? How do you make this buckle work on a leather wristband with limited tools? How do I make this super cool thrift store skirt fit? How do I do a blanket stitch? How the hell do you make a narwhal horn out of fabric? To answer these questions, I usually look to the internet, to other craft blogs like this one. Most of the time, I can find a tutorial that may help, or I can study others’ finished products. Then I fiddle around with my materials, probably making several prototypes and trying and failing a few times before I get it to my liking. I think this process of trying and failing and trying until I get it right is one of the more frustrating but rewarding parts of the creative process. Once I have that finished whosie-whatsit in front of me, I feel this immense sense of pride that not only did I make that, I taught myself how to do it; I made it my own.

Anchors Aflight will be my chronicle of not only my finished products, but how I got to dream them up, learn the skills, and make them come to life. I hope you enjoy it a smidgen as much as I do!