Another journal

My best friend is wonderful in many ways, and one of those was is that she tells me what to make him for presents. Birthdays are the important ones. Last year I wrote a story for her Fallout ghoul OC and this year I looked at my list of suggestions and decided to make him a little hand puppet. As a kid he’d had a little pig puppet with an aloha shirt that was fun to remove, and she liked to make the voice for it. The suggestion given me was to make a puppet for his fursona and! it was also a nice way to fill another square on Fibre Arts Bingo: “Make something with the waste/leftovers of other projects.”

First, please appreciate the cuteness of puppet Molly. She has a floral shirt that can be removed (like her inspiration), and a very simple denim vest. I’ve made a lot of puppets before (though not all were as involved as the owlbear puppet), but the simplicity of a hand puppet is a real delight.

Like I do, I looked at what patterns were around for what I wanted to make then quickly drafted out my own. At this point I’ve made enough plushies and whatnot to be able to eyeball shapes, so it came together pretty quickly.

Now, this square was using scraps from old projects and the faux fur used for most of the body was most of the last scraps of faux fur purchased to make my best friend’s cat a sky bison costume for the Korra finale, which was ah. Well over 10 years ago. More of the scrap was used a couple of years ago to make her a stuffed animal (a minotaur that is not quite this fursona, but spiritually similar).

With Joann Fabrics gone, frankly I don’t know where I will get faux fur in the future (I’ll figure it out, but no rush), so I had to use what I had on hand. Which was luckily enough! Not quite enough to do the body, which was done in cotton flannel, but the inside of faux fur feels gross to the hand, so that worked out fine.

It went together easily enough! Her clothing is more scraps: the shirt was made from some hippie dress or top from who knows when that has had patches and pieces cut out enough there’s not much left, the vest from one of the scraps I keep whenever jeans become jean shorts. To be fair, this square and the “stash only” feel a little like cheats because I generally only work from stash any more, because we live in a small space (the bulk of the stash acquired in different living situations). The overall goal this year is to reduce the stash as much as I can, turning things into objects and clothing.

This though, this was a real joyous use of scraps. I love knowing that this was made with pieces from something I made for a cat my best friend and I both loved, in celebration of a show that felt (and was) so important to us and to seeing queer relationships on TV. So much time between then and now! And our friendship the bridge across it.