Category Archives: Felt

Eddie’s Baby Banner

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I’m happy to share the news that our new grandchild Eddie was born on Feb. 15th, 2024. He’s named Edward, after his maternal grandfather, but his parents, Mary and our son Peter, call him Eddie. So, that’s the name I put on his baby banner. Our family is growing so fast, I can hardly believe it! Little Eddie and his cousin Elias were born 13 months apart and we hope they become good buddies (see Elias’s banner here).

MAKING THE BANNER
Read ahead to see photos, videos, and commentary about making Eddie’s baby banner. I’ve divided the post into different sections, including wrapping wire letters and embellishing felt borders, which are are some of the more distinguishable features of my banners. To see posts about this and other celebratory banners I’ve made over the years for family and friends, scroll through the archives here.

WRAPPING WIRE LETTERS
After choosing a color scheme and picking out pieces of felt and thread, I wrote out Eddie’s name in cursive handwriting with a pencil on paper. Fortunately, his name could be written in one continuous line, which doesn’t always happen. I then wrapped a length of DMC memory thread (a kind of wire) with 3 strands of variegated embroidery floss (see video below). Using the drawing as a template, I bent the wire to form his name and stitched the letters together where they touched.

In this video, I demonstrate wrapping DMC memory thread with 3 strands of embroidery floss to create numbers and letters for Eddie’s birth weight. I thought it would be easier to see the process using contrasting wire and thread colors. Of course, using the same color wire and thread is better for hiding gaps and inconsistencies. It takes a lot of practice to get the hang of wrapping the wire. If you’ve learned to wrap arms and legs for the wee folk dolls in my how-to book, Felt Wee Folk, you’ve got a jump start on mastering this technique.

EMBELLISHING FELT BORDERS
I love embellishing with blanket stitching, especially with variegated thread. It’s a simple, but effective way to create an edge that looks clean and assertive, while also displaying a handmade quality. For me, it’s important to show that a real person made it, not a machine. For this banner, I created layers of felt pieces, which I blanket stitched with pima cotton (Watercolours by Caron).

In this is a video, I demonstrate embellishing borders for the banner.

The border around Eddie’s birth date needed perking up, so I added beads.

CANDY CANE STRIPES
When I finished making numbers for the year 2024 and laid them out, they looked kind of plain. So, I decided to wind a single strand of orange embroidery floss around the wire numbers (see video below).

I looked through my driftwood collection and found the right sized stick that would work as a hanging bar. I braided cord to make a strap and drilled holes in the stick big enough to thread cord through.

This video shows how I chain stitched spirals on the scalloped flaps at the bottom of the banner.

We’re pleased as punch with little Eddie and look forward to getting to know him as he grows!

To keep up with new posts, please subscribe to this blog. Your contact info will not be sold or shared. If you’d like to see more frequent photos tracking the projects in my studio, please follow me on Facebook and/or Instagram.

Cover Madness at The Horn Book

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UPDATE: I just received word that my 2012 cover was voted the winner of The Horn Book Magazine’s Cover Madness contest in the January/February category! As part of this year’s centennial celebration of the magazine’s founding, this “very-subjective, not-serious event” will continue with more contests to pick covers from previous issues published in March/Aril, May/June, etc. By the end of Cover Madness, 6 different covers will “emerge as winners”.

What a wonderful surprise this is! Even though the children’s book community has always been very supportive, I sometimes feel like an imposter because of my singular vision and nontraditional illustration medium. So, I’m especially honored to have my work recognized this way. Of all the groups my work is lumped into, from embroidery to doll making, the storytelling genre of children’s books is where I feel most at home. I hope that you enjoy this account from 2012 about how I made the cover!

This is an edited and republished version of a post that was first written in 2012.

The Jan/Feb 2012 issue of The Horn Book Magazine is out, with my illustration on the cover. This issue has many wonderful articles and book reviews, including the 2011 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award speeches, which were delivered at the colloquium on Sept. 30th, 2011.

In this post, I share the process of making The Horn Book cover illustration, which I worked on for about 6 weeks this past summer. The original size of the scene is about 12″ wide and 18″ high. The original piece was purchased by an art collector who is connected to the children’s book world.

As the Horn Book Award recipient for Pocketful of Posies in 2011, I had the honor of illustrating a cover for the magazine. You can find out more about my award here. Signed copies of the book are available in my Etsy Shop.

THE TREE
I first found a twisted vine to use as the central tree and made a sketch with the Horn Book logo and child characters. I then drilled holes on the vine where wire branches would go.  

To form the branches, I covered wire with felt and embroidered them to match the real vine/tree trunk. This coiled branch has thread-wrapped wire thorns attached.

The Horn Book logo was rendered in wire branches and found objects. For one of the O’s, I sawed the back of a walnut-shell, so that it would lay flat and not stick out too much.  The O in the word Horn is a nest-like acorn cap from an oak tree in Iowa and the B’s spiky acorn caps are from northern California.

THE FELT BACKGROUND
I thought that a solid color background would looked too plain, so I stitched together scraps of naturally dyed wool felt to make a more interesting field for the action.

I made a little fairy to fit in the walnut-shell.

THE CHILDREN
I didn’t want the characters to be animals, but children dressed in animal costumes. So, I made every effort to make them look like children by giving them bangs, ponytails, hands and shoes. These figures are made with similar techniques found in my how-to book, Felt Wee Folk.

During the process, I changed some of the characters in the original sketch and substituted a boy in a dinosaur costume pulling an acorn cap wheeled wagon full of books.

I printed out the words on acetate, so that I’d be sure to leave enough room at the bottom edge. I then embroidered plants and leaves to the felt background.

This little child/mouse is getting red shoes.

The Horn Book staff suggested I include a reading child, so I made a felt book for the face-painted mouse.

All of the parts piled up as I worked. It’s a miracle nothing got lost!

It was really fun thinking up costumes to make for these kids. I wanted to create a scene of children immersed in imaginary play and story.

I added a sun to the upper left corner and embroidered a wavy chain-stitched border. Then, I sewed the felt background to a sheet of foam core board, pulling it flat and straight.

Then, I stitched the tree, characters and other props in place, right through the foam core board. After everything was in place, I took it to the photographer, so he could take its picture. After that, I removed it from the foam core board and remounted the felt background and all of the parts on a cloth-covered stretcher. It is now framed behind glass and was recently bought by a collector. It was a joy to work on this project with Lolly Robinson at the Horn Book Magazine! Having my illustration on the cover will be a great opportunity for many people to discover my work for the first time.

Here I am with Roger Sutton, editor in chief of The Horn Book.

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Rabbitat revisited

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With the coming of spring and Easter, I think it’s a good time to revisit Rabbitat, which I completed 13 years ago. The piece was an experiment of sorts, for the purpose of reintroducing a sense of play into my working process. At the time, I was transitioning from the all-consuming 4-year job of researching, illustrating, and launching Pocketful of Posies and I felt the need to make something that wasn’t restricted by size and type placement specifications. I also wanted to be free to change things around as I went along.

When I set out to make Rabbitat, I had just 2 elements in mind — a driftwood house and a rabbit topiary. I let the landscape evolve as I worked on it, adding rabbit characters and a garden details as the imagined scenario unfolded. I told my husband Rob that I was making a habitat for rabbits and he immediately said, “Oh, it’s a Rabbitat!” The scene is available as a note card and a children’s jigsaw puzzle in my Etsy Shop.

RABBITAT note cards and a children’s jigsaw puzzle are now available in my Etsy Shop.

Homespun Note Card Sampler

TOPIARY
I frequently draw thumbnails sketches of visual impressions that pop into my head. For years, ideas for animal shaped topiaries kept showing up in my notebooks.

In Rabbitat, I wanted to expand the topiary concept that was introduced with the cat and bird in the “Molly, my sister and I” rhyme from Pocketful of Posies.

RABBITS
To make the rabbit figures, I used the same methods taught in my how-to book, Felt Wee Folk, with furry adaptations, including long pointy ears sewn on top.

RABBITAT FILM
Before the piece was finished and all of the parts sewn to the background, I asked local cinematographer (and friend of my son Peter), Daniel Cojanu to make a short documentary about how I work (see the Rabbitat film below). We had such fun coming up with different ways of showing my art, from stitching closeups to gathering driftwood to stop-motion animation. In the years since then, Daniel has gone on to build an impressive career producing science and environmental documentary films.

DRIFTWOOD HOUSE
To make the house, I combed through all of my driftwood and selected pieces which I could see as a roof, side beams, and a doorway. I carved them in spots, so that they fit together and lay down as flat as possible.

I decorated the house walls with an embroidered chain-stitched vine pattern on felt. This was the first time that I made mossy patches using lots and lots of French knots.

RABBIT TOPIARY
For the rabbit topiary, I cut separate parts out of dark green felt and embroidered branches and leaves. The eyes, nose, mouth and whiskers are wire wrapped with embroidery floss. I also sewed wire along the scalloped outside edge, so that the pieces could be bent and shaped. Two glass leaf beads make the eyes.

The piece is large compared to my book illustrations, measuring 24″ x 30″ , with a depth of 1 1/2″.

SLIDE SHOW
I hope that you enjoy this slide show of details from the piece.

BRIAR BORDER
At some point, I decided to add an arched border with a curved and thorny briar made of felt covered wire.

EXHIBITION
The next opportunity to see the original Rabbitat will be July 27, 2024 – mid-Feb. 2025 at the Albany Institute of History and Art, Albany, NY. Bedtime Stitches and Social Fabric will be displayed together.

To keep up with new posts, please subscribe to this blog. Your contact info will not be sold or shared. If you’d like to see more frequent photos tracking the projects in my studio, please follow me on Facebook and/or Instagram.

Baby Polar Bear Suit

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Last December, I made some small gifts, including a little version of my grandson Elias in his polar bear snow suit. I’m looking forward to making more mementos like this and hope it becomes a yearly tradition! These days, it seems that practically every children’s hat and hooded outfit comes with a pair of animal ears on top. That’s fine with me – the more playful, the better!

I also made new Inuit dolls, which I’ll write about in a future post. They are a redo of a project I originally made for my kids and designed for Better Homes and Gardens magazine in 1986.

Baby Polar Bear Doll
The 4″ doll is based on the figures in my how-to book, Felt Wee Folk, only I used wool needlepoint yarn (regular knitting yarn is too bulky) instead of embroidery floss to wrap the hands and feet on the pipe cleaner armature.

As usual, I painted multiple faces on wooden beads and picked out the one I like best. Even after painting thousands of faces, I still mess up sometimes.

The suit is made with some really thick wool felt that I was given years ago. It is probably manufactured for industrial purposes rather than little polar bear suits. The video below shows how I wrapped the feet and hands and sewed on the suit.

In the past year or so, I’ve used a hands-free phone/light stand made by Canvas that makes documenting my process a lot easier. I used to have to bug Rob to stop whatever he was doing and come film different steps with his camera. Now, I can take photos or videos whenever I want to. The downside is that I can’t get into the flow because I’m always thinking about recording some aspect of how I work. And there are times when I’m so engrossed that I skip entire sections of the process. That’s why my demonstration videos aren’t really tutorials. They’re more like peeking over my shoulder while I work. You might not see every detail, but you can get the gist of it.

After sewing on the suit, I made the hood – ears and all. The hood is made from a lighter weight wool felt.

The following video shows how I glued on the head and constructed the hood.

After the doll was finished, I got the idea of chain stitching Elias’s name and the year on the back. Yes, this will definitely be a yearly tradition!

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Baby Bunting Twins

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January is reserved for playing and puttering in my studio. I really look forward to this time of hibernation, without outside distractions. 31 days doesn’t seem long enough to make all of the things I’ve been dreaming about! So far, I’ve worked on simple projects that might take a few days, instead of months or seasons. I’ve already made several gifts, including a pair of Baby Buntings for twin 3 year-old girls. This post includes photos and 3 videos that show the process of making them.

The dolls are simpler than the figures with floss-wrapped arms and legs in my how-to book, Felt Wee Folk – New Adventures. The baby’s pipe cleaner body is padded and hidden inside a felt suit. Since the dolls would be played with by real children, I doubled up the pipe cleaners to make them extra sturdy. In the following video, you’ll see me forming the armature and covering it with wool batting.

The suits are made with naturally dyed wool felt and embroidered with fine wool tapestry yarn from my old stash. I’m sad to say that DMC discontinued selling the yarn years ago.

The following video shows me stitching the bunting yoke. To give an honest impression, I left in some clips that reveal snags, instead of editing them out. Maybe someday I’ll string all of the bloopers together!

I was was so engrossed with painting their faces that I forgot to take photos or videos. Their heads are made with 1′ wooden knobs (not beads), which are available here. Beads could be used as well. I just liked the size and flat bottom of the knobs.

The following video demonstrates how I attached the head, stitched the pointed hat, and formed the silk ribbon tie, which is a process I can’t describe in words.

These little dolls were so fun to make! They are now happily living with 3 year-old twins in Vermont. Stay tuned for future stories about more gifts I’ve made this month.

To keep up with new posts, please subscribe to this blog Your contact info will not be sold or shared. If you’d like to see more frequent photos tracking the projects in my studio, please follow me on Facebook and/or Instagram.

Harvest Time – Part 7 (wee folk)

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In Part 7 in the continuing series about making Harvest Time, I share photos and commentary about the wee folk characters who populate the landscape. In the coming weeks, I will post more stories that focus on different aspects of making the fall scene, including the miniature storage containers and the embroidered trees. So far, I’ve written the following posts:
The overview introduces the Harvest Time piece.
Part 1 features moss making.
Part 2 is about making the turkey tail mushroom.
Part 3 shows the construction of felt leaves.
Part 4 gives a peek at embroidering the plants.
Part 5 is about making the toadstool mushroom.
Part 6 covers the underground tunnels, roots and stones.

Harvest Time is the fall scene in a series of seasonal landscapes that capture the wonder and magic of the natural world, both real and imagined. Note cards and jigsaw puzzles of the this and other scenes in the series (Frosty Morning and Mossy Glen) are available in my Etsy Shop.

Everything I make includes some sort of living being with eyes, be they animal or human. I can’t imagine spending months working on a piece that is purely decorative, abstract or simply a landscape, without a storytelling element. The interplay between characters and their surroundings is what drives me to create. As I paint their faces, form their little bodies and stitch their clothes, I grow to care about them. This emotional connection is what motivates me to spend copious amounts of time creating an imaginary world that is worthy of their existence.

For this scene, I painted more faces than I needed, in different sizes and shades. That way, I could select a cast of characters later. I’m never sure how many figures I’ll need or exactly where they’ll end up. They are like actors in an improvisational skit or a group posed in a tableau.

The little people range in size between 1″ to 2″ tall. They were made the same way as the wee folk dolls in my how-to book, Felt Wee Folk, with slight variations. For instance, I used wire instead of pipe cleaners for their tiny armatures.

In keeping with the harvesting theme, all of the people are bringing produce to the mossy stump, where it will be stored in the cellar.

I’m often asked, “How do you knit their tiny outfits?” There might be someone out there who can knit or crochet a tiny sweater for a 2″ doll, but I challenge them to stuff their arms through the sleeves! Remember, this is make believe. The wee folk never have to bathe or change their clothes. Why knit, when you can embroider a piece of clothing directly onto a body? Rows of chain stitching are pretty convincing, don’t you think? I call it faux knitting.

Please stay tuned for more stories about making Harvest Time, including the storage containers and embroidered trees.
The overview introduces the Harvest Time piece.
Part 1 features moss making.
Part 2 is about making the turkey tail mushroom.
Part 3 shows the construction of felt leaves.
Part 4 gives a peek at embroidering the plants.
Part 5 is about making the toadstool mushroom
Part 6 covers the underground tunnels, roots and stones.

To keep up with new posts, please subscribe to this blog. Your contact info will not be sold or shared. If you’d like to see more frequent photos tracking the projects in my studio, please follow me on Facebook and/or Instagram.

Baby Banner for Elias

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For the past 15 years or so, I’ve made personalized gifts for friends and family that commemorate special events like weddings and births. These embellished felt banners combine two of my favorite things, hand embroidery and handwriting. You can see this and other banners by scrolling through the archives here.

Now, I finally had the opportunity to make a banner celebrating a birth in my immediate family! Last month, our son Ian and his wife Liz became the parents of our first grandchild! Little Elias was born on Jan. 18th, 2023, 100 years to the day after my father.

We are all completely in love with with this little guy! I just love watching my son interacting with his son. As an extra bonus, the new family lives practically across the street, so we get to see Elias all the time. I can already feel my focus shifting into Grandma mode, which is a welcome change. Hopefully, there will be room in my heart and daily schedule for both art and being a Grandma.

Naturally, I quickly got to work making a banner for Elias. After picking out the basic color scheme, I wrote his first and middle names in cursive handwriting on paper. Using that as a template, I made a 3-dimensional copy with memory thread. That way, I knew what length of wire to use.

I wrapped the memory thread (or wire) with 3 strands of embroidery floss.
UPDATE: I misspelled Laszlo, which is the baby’s maternal great-grandfather’s name! Watch this video to see the remake.

Remaking Laszlo

I usually use variegated floss to wrap the wire, which can look like stripes on the 2nd pass. The wire ends are bent over and wrapped, so that no raw ends are hanging out. It’s similar to the technique I use to make doll limbs in my how-to book Felt Wee Folk.

When I finished wrapping Lazslo and positioned it on the felt background, there wasn’t enough contrast, so I gave it a candy stripe to make it pop more.

I use an ironing board as a work surface. Here, you can see what I’m working on in the middle. On either side are printouts of banners I’ve made in the past, which I used for reference.

I had to wrap the numbers a couple of times because the size was off.

I edged the green felt panel with blanket stitches, using variegated pima cotton thread from the Caron Collection,

I wrote out the birth weight in green first and then did it over in yellow to create more contrast, which seemed to be a recurring theme with this banner.

After sewing the lettering onto the green background panel, I chain-stitched a vine to fill the open space between the names.

Out of my stash, I selected bone beads to make a decorative separator between the names and birth date.

I then sewed the green panel to the lavender background felt.

To make the banner rigid at the top, I made a sleeve and inserted a piece of wood.

I looked through my driftwood collection and found the right sized stick that would work as a hanging bar. I drilled holes big enough to thread cord through.

I fed cord through the holes and a metal bead separator, hiding the tail threads on the back.

This banner will soon hang on Elias’s bedroom door. Welcome to the world little one! We look forward to getting to know you!

To keep up with new posts, please subscribe to this blog. Your contact info will not be sold or shared. If you’d like to see more frequent photos tracking the projects in my studio, please follow me on Facebook and/or Instagram.

Harvest Time – part 3 (felt leaves)

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In Part 3 in the series about making Harvest Time, I share photos, commentary and a stitch-minute video about embellishing the felt leaves that appear on the ground-cover and bushes. Please note that when I use the word ‘felt”, I’m referring to the noun, not the verb. Felting is agitating and manipulating wool fleece fibers with a barbed needle or soapy water to create a felted surface. That’s how I made the brown soil in the underground part, which I’ll describe in a future post.

In the coming weeks and months, I will post more stories that focus on different aspects of making the fall scene, including the toad stool mushroom, wee folk figures, needle felted tunnels, roots, stones and foliage of all kinds. Part 1 featured moss making. Part 2 is about making the turkey tail mushroom.

Harvest Time is the fall scene in a series of seasonal landscapes that capture the wonder and magic of the natural world, both real and imagined.
Harvest Time note cards and a jigsaw puzzle are available in my Etsy Shop.

When envisioning this piece, I wasn’t sure how it would come together, but that’s normal for me. I knew that I needed to figure out a way to clearly define the edge between above ground and below ground. This is the kind of thing I think about when doing busy work, like stitching hundreds of French knots. I’m always one step ahead, planning the next move. I ended up creating a kind of flap with two sections of felt “sod” that overlapped the underground tunnel to the root cellar.

Felt Leaves
After edging the felt leaves with blanket stitches, I bent wire to match the shape and stitched it to the outside edge. Then I kept going around until the wire was completely covered with thread. I used single strands of floss to give it a fine finished look.

I wanted to fill the ground cover with an eye-catching array of textures, colors and shapes that would balance the composition of the whole piece. To help the leaves perk up and create shadows, I pushed the wire stems through a small hole to the back of the felt background, where it became a leverage point.

Because this scene has an element of fantasy, I felt free to incorporate bright unnatural looking shades.

I searched through my stash and found some variegated yellow embroidery floss to use for the chain stitched veins on these hot pink leaves.

When I embellish with thread, I constantly think about how to enhance and articulate the form, without becoming too cluttered. For instance, adding a dark pink outline around the veins on this leaf help emphasize the lines.

I hadn’t noticed it before, but now I see that the leaves are all made with complimentary colors. That way they pop out at you, both visually and physically!

This Stitch Minute video shows how I made a wire edged felt leaf.

As you can see, I constructed this background piece separately from the other parts of the scene. At the very end, after months of work, I assembled all of the pieces and stitched the sections onto one stretched fabric layer.

I also made larger orange leaves for the berry bush that’s growing next to the moss covered stump.

In future posts, I will focus on different aspects of making Harvest Time, including the toad stool mushroom, wee folk figures, needle felted tunnels, roots, stones and foliage of all kinds.
The overview introduces the Harvest Time piece.
Part 1 features moss making.
Part 2 is about making the turkey tail mushroom.
Part 3 shows the construction of felt leaves.
Part 4 gives a peek at embroidering the plants.
Part 5 is about making the toadstool mushroom
Part 6 shows the process of making the underground

Mossy Glen overview

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On this cold January day, I’d like to transport us all to springtime in the Mossy Glen. I began making this new piece in my 4 seasons series last May, just when light green buds started appearing on the maple trees. While I worked on it all summer and into the early fall, I took photos of different stages of the process. As with last year’s winter landscape, Frosty Morning, I will be posting several stories about how I created the different parts for Mossy Glen, from the plants and moss to the little characters frolicking about.

To do that, it’s going to take some adjustment on my part. First off, I’m going to have to turn on the explaining part of my brain, which has been dormant for quite a while. Writing this introductory post and sorting out which photos to include is a way to ease the transition from doing to talking about doing. While I’m in the middle of a project, I give myself over to whatever I’m envisioning and trust that it will work out. I solve each problem as it appears, always keeping the big picture in mind. I don’t try to explain the process, even to myself, for fear of dispelling the magic.

Throughout the months that I was making Mossy Glen, I shared glimpses of my work table on Facebook and/or Instagram. Understandably, my followers were curious about how this or that was made. I gave brief and evasive answers, like “I’ll explain later when it’s finished.” and “Let’s just call it magic.” It’s a tease of sorts, but true to my experience. Now that the piece has been finished for a while, I’m free to go back and review the process with a more analytical eye.

There’s a lot to show and I’m still figuring out how to organize the parts. I’ll be sharing several Stitch Minute videos that give closeup views of me working on different sections of the piece.

I’ll be covering moss-making and stone wall building…

and forsythia blossoming…

and views of constructing the little figures living in the hillside.

I’ll show how I made the cherry trees…

and violets…

and even a mini clothes line.

Please stay tuned for more photos, videos and explanations in the coming weeks.
Part 1 (moss)
Part 2 (cherry trees)
Part 3 (stone walls)
Part 4 (forsythia)
Part 5 (felt and wire leaves)
Part 6 (stitched leaves)

Mossy Glen, Frosty Morning and Harvest Time jigsaw puzzles and note cards are available in my Etsy shop.

To keep up with new posts, please subscribe to this blog Your contact info will not be sold or shared. If you’d like to see more frequent photos tracking the projects in my studio, please follow me on Facebook and/or Instagram.

MY BED – Home: Part 5

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PART 5 – Rooster, Cow, Parrot, Camel, Bunny, Crocodile, Duck, Cat, Pony and Sheep: Today’s post finishes up the “Home” series about making the illustration in My Bed, where all of the animal icons featured throughout the book come together in a child’s bedroom at the end.
Part 1 gives an overview of the page.
Part 2 focuses on the outside architectural details of the cut-away house.
Part 3 takes a peek inside at the furniture and the sleeping child.
Part 4 shows how I made the elephant lamp and goldfish lampshade.

Signed copies of My Bed are available in my shop here. Watch this 8-minute documentary about making the artwork for the book.

First, I want to remind those of you in the New England area that there’s only a short time left (through Dec. 31st, 2021) to see Bedtime Stitches at the New England Quilt Museum! The touring exhibition of original bas-relief embroidered artwork for the book will then travel to the International Quilt Museum in Lincoln, NE, Jan. 25 – April 10, 2022. See the the full schedule of participating museums here.

Bedtime Stitches exhibition at the New England Quilt Museum

It was so much fun to find ways to cram all of the animals into the child’s bedroom – overhead and underfoot, hanging on the wall, resting on the windowsill and crowding the bed. I like to think of these mini versions as souvenirs from the places around the world where the book travels. As you can see, my interior design style is anything but minimalist.

Some of the animals are depicted in portrait form, such as the rooster and the cow.

The parrot took flight…

and the sheep emerged through french knots and chain stitches.

I shrunk the crocodile to about half it’s size. You’d think it would be tedious, but I relish this kind of thing. I like figuring out how to reduce the scale, while preserving what makes something or someone identifiable.

The crocodile was a last minute addition due to some editorial adjustments, but luckily there was room to fit him on the bed.

We filmed this little animation before the crocodile was added.

There were other changes, too. Both the larger and mini versions of the camel had to undergo plastic surgery, when a follower pointed out that African camels are the dromedary or one-hump type, which shows sloppy research on my part. So, I transformed this guy’s two-humps into one! Luckily this all happened while I was still making the illustrations, so it could be fixed before the artwork was photographed for the book.

The cat and bunny look like they’re dressed in Halloween costumes! I made them using a scaled down version of the wrapped wire method I teach in Felt Wee Folk.

This sweet little Mongolian pony completes the 5 part series about making the “Home” page for MY BED. I hope that you’ve enjoyed this glimpse behind the scenes at my process.
Part 1 gives an overview of the page.
Part 2 focuses on the outside architectural details of the cut-away house.
Part 3 takes a peek inside at the furniture and the sleeping child.
Part 4 shows how I made the elephant lamp and goldfish lampshade.

To keep up with new posts, please subscribe to this blog. Your contact info will not be sold or shared. If you’d like to see more frequent photos tracking the projects in my studio, please follow me on Facebook and/or Instagram.