After reading the article about Gordon and Peggy Hayes' dragons in the Winter 2009 Teddy Bear & Friends, I was inspired to make a dragon. This is the first large soft sculpture I've ever made (that I can remember anyway). I decided I didn't want to go through all the hassle of making a pattern and turning the pieces and stuffing the dragon and trying to get an armature in it, so I decided to make a dragon from the inside out. I made an armature out of copper wire (maybe not the best choice, but it was all I had on hand that was big enough), and then felted the dragon's body around that.
After that was all finished, I gave him some skin. I used a batik fabric for this, mainly because I liked the print, but also because batiks don't really fray. It was still a bit of a pain to work with though. I had originally planned to use ultrasuede, but I was doing this over Christmas break, and I had left all of my ultrasuede at school.
Here he is after I finished his tail and had the fabric in place for his body. I used a combination of ladder stitch and applique to attach the fabric. Invisible thread is my best friend.
In the next picture, he's all done, except for his head, since I hadn't ordered his eyes yet. There are no pictures between these two because I didn't want to stop and take pictures. I just wanted to get the torture of finishing him over with. His toes were the worst part. He has 16 of them. They're made out of pipe cleaners, and each one needed to be individually covered with fabric, and they each needed to have two pieces of fabric sewn on. One red piece was sewn around each toe, then a green piece was appliqued to the bottom to cover the seam and give him cool-looking paw pads. I have never stabbed myself with my needle so many times while working on a project.
Now we get to the really fun pictures! I finished him last night! In case you're wondering why on earth I decided to name him Oscar, it's just because that's the name that kept coming to mind while I was working on him, and it stuck.
In case you're also wondering why he's sitting on top of cardboard, it's because I have a cardboard wall in the middle of my apartment. See, I have a one-room studio apartment, and I didn't like sleeping in the living room, so I built a wall and made myself a bedroom and a living room. I made the wall out of cardboard because you can stick lots of stuff to cardboard.
His mouth didn't turn out quite the way I planned, but, oh well, I'll get better.
I just love his eyes. :)
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