My Menagerie...

A couple of weekends ago I went on a craft getaway with my Mom. Twice a year I get to leave my busy life behind and go on a weekend retreat and craft just for pure enjoyment.

The weekend focuses on quilting... a favorite crafting pastime of mine, but I also like to bring extra projects along in case I need a break from my sewing machine.

This time I brought some plastic animals.

Yep. From the Jo-Ann Fabric "what's-that-stuff-doing-in-a-fabric-store" aisle. You see a while back I pinned this picture of a plastic animal pincushion and it became the dearest wish of my heart. (Well not the DEAREST wish, but I wanted one really bad.)

So I made some.

I packed up a bag with a glue gun, some notions, fiberfill stuffing and the plastic animals and tossed it in with my quilting stuff. Thursday night at the retreat is a little more low-key (though let me tell you, those sewing machines get up and running QUICK.)

I plugged in my glue gun and got to work. First I made a small pincushion and stuffed it really firmly with the fiberfill. I cut two circles and sewed them together and then used Perle cotton to embellish it.

I used my trusty glue gun to glue the edging on a piece of leather and stitched the pincushion (along with a couple of dots of hot glue) to it. 

Next I made a headdress for the Giraffe. (Like you do.) I used some ribbon roses, rhinestones and trim. (Thankfully my mom always travels with a small bag of embellishments that are appropriate for adorning plastic animals.)

 

He looks pretty happy about it. Everything's better with a fancy headdress. Then I glued the pincushion to him and added a rolled up piece of felt for needles and stuff, added a few more adornments and hung a thimble on him for good measure.

I liked him so much, I made an elephant.

I still have a few more animals in the queue. Maybe they'll get done at the next retreat.

I did do some quilting as well. I got out my Civil War reproduction fabrics and found some inspiration from this tutorial. I perfected half-square triangles for sure!

I made some pretty good headway.

That's Lincoln in the center block, NOT Daniel Day Lewis, but it kinda looks like him.

Looking forward to adding the background and borders and adding it to my handmade quilt collection.