Whales – Fluffyland Craft & Sewing Blog

May 29, 2015

graduation gift: tiny graduate narwhals in college colors

tiny narwhal graduates in custom college colors

I’ve been playing with fleece swatches and tiny stitches for weeks, and I’m finally ready to announce: tiny graduate narwhals in custom college colors!

These are so fun to make. The bright colors bring the tiny narwhals to a new level: each pairing of hues gives the little guys an entirely unique personality.

I started with my home state, Virginia, with Virginia Tech facing off UVA in the banner photo. But who’s next? I can’t wait to make these in every shade of the rainbow.

The graduation narwhals make a great gift for college grads, of course, but I think they might be even better suited for high school graduates who can spend the summer scheming and dreaming with a college-colored narwhal by their side. They probably already have enough t-shirts from their future alma mater – and if they don’t, they’ll get more for free when fall comes. What they don’t have is a tiny narwhal with a graduation cap.

March 16, 2013

custom plush catch-up

This is a fun hodge-podge of “never been blogged” plush. While I love making the standard gray narwhals, I love the challenge of a custom plush request.

The best of these, of course, was the plush dunkleosteus (armored fish) that I made for a friend at school last Christmas. But the best part? After I blogged it, someone else found the blog entry and wanted one for his wife, who “has a soft spot in her heart for The Armored Fish of the Devonian”.

So I’ve made not one, but two Dunkleosteus. The internet is amazing… and hilarious.

This past Christmas, my friend Ethan asked if I’d make a pumpkin for his girlfriend. I gladly obliged, since I love orange. I think she turned out pretty adorable with her tiny purple bow.

Then I was asked to stitch up an incredibly bright custom narwhal: hot pink with a kelly green belly. I was almost skeptical, but I loved it in the end. The bright colors look so great with the gray striped tusks!

And going way back into the past… I never posted Zoe’s GIANT velour whale. He was huge, and squishy, and the velour is just so soft.

And it was so loved. Still can’t get enough of that adorable grin. That’s why I sew.

I suppose I haven’t wandered far at all from the whale realm, but I’m itching to try some different animals. Elephants? Wiener dogs? I think I need a sewing day!

June 24, 2012

strawberry picking: perception vs. reality

Last weekend, I decided to go strawberry picking.

pick your own strawberries

I drove through the country side with high ambition: I’d bake a pie, definitely. And I planned to make more awesome granola to top with the freshest strawberries. And maybe throw together a jam, you know, if I just have too many strawberries to deal with. Mmm.

tiny strawberries in a box

I headed into the fields with my giant cardboard crate and began to look for strawberries.

tiny tiny strawberry!

They were all so cute! So tiny! So organic and genetically unmanipulated!

But they were also so close to the ground, and so far apart, and soon I got tired of flipping over the perfect looking ones to find a squishy, bug-laden underside. Plus, I think I like the genetically modified strawberries… sorry, but these just weren’t the greatest.

my haul of freshly picked strawberries

Without shame or regret for my ambitions, I weighed my meager haul and headed back home. No pie, no jams, not even fresh granola, but I did have some great strawberries on my cereal that week :) And it was a good adventure, with fresh air and cool breezes and bright sunshine. I even got the ghost of a tan during those 15 minutes in the fields!

And the trip was fruitful in a different fashion: I found a fabric store! And they had a whale knit – an orange-bellied whale knit. You don’t find that every day.