~:: Designing Interlude ::~

You see the metal stars that hang at the entrance of the house?  The morning sun, shining like back-lit honey, came down through those stars, throwing a shadow on the deck below – and the pumpkin on the wooden bench. I have a close-up I’ll add later.  I was just fascinated.

The rest of this short piece is about a long time fascination: before I ever thought of knitting horses, I thought a lot about making fabric and plush horses.  Stuffed animal toys have always fascinated me, but I could never work out the dimensionality.  I have made clothes – and never loved doing it.  And i have made a mess of quilts, loving the color and the shapes and textures.  But that is flat work.

How do you figure out a flat pattern for a round head?

So yesterday, I screwed my courage to the sticking place and decided I was going to figure some of this out.

I’d bought some thrift store stuffed horses to take apart – but here’s the rub: if I’m charmed enough by a lost little toy to want to make it, how can I stand to take it apart?  I had other horses to use as inspiration.  And I had a Vogue pattern that I almost liked, and an older book full of animal designs, some I like a lot, some not so much.  So I took some pleasingly loud and extra fleece and decided to bite the bullet and try to make up the Vogue pattern, hoping the experience would teach me something about round shapes rendered in flat fabric.

The pieces.  And the camera Gin sent home for M as a wedding present.  I cut out the pieces, read the pattern, which seemed straight forward enough.  And I was getting pretty pleased with myself – yeah, I understood exactly what they were doing with the head darts and the ear setting – and knew enough that I didn’t like the tail set.  So I put together the ears.  Stumbled  a bit with the first placement – but was pretty smug about how quickly and perfectly I did the second one.

Until I realized that I’d set that ear in the hip darts instead of the head ones.  This horse now had an ear sticking up from his behind.  Good seam rippers are a girl’s best friend.

After I had a lot of him put together, I realized a couple of things:

1. When you are making a shaped animal for the first time, maybe it’s better to start with fabric that doesn’t stretch easily in all directions.  Because then your animal gets – a little lumpy and weird.

2. The horse was uuugly.  Chaz thought he was cute.  She was wrong.  He looked like a fat giraffe gone bad.

3. And the pattern itself had problems short legs in front of the horse.  Long legs behind.  He looked as it he were leaning into a stiff wind.  And his neck was way too skinny.  And the designer had added what was supposed to be a horse-cheek but came out (one this horse) looking a little more like horse-goiter.

The lovely red cardinals in the fabric pattern didn’t help any.  His head started looking kinda turkey-like to me.  So I frogged him.  Is that what you knitters call it?  And let me tell you, pulling yarn out is easier than unpicking tiny little stitches.

And I began the process of changing the pattern.  I took the book pattern, compared it to the Vogue – found that the book horse was MUCH taller and bigger, but had the same sized head.  And I took a strong look at the shaping of the legs, the chest, the narrowing of the boy towards the back; I don’t want a realistic horse, but I do want a shape that keeps the spirit of horseness.

Hand tracing some lines, changing them, drawing them up in scannable pieces, the sticking the pieces together in Photoshop so that I could scale down the design to a workable size.

I think this was his better side in the first place.  He has no sides just now. I’m reworking the stomach and inside of legs part so that he will be trimmer.  So this is still in process.  I’d have had him put back together this evening if I hadn’t had the million tiny errands to run.  I’ll show you  what happens the next time I stuff him.