A Swamp

Since I had so much fun working out a pattern for the bunny, I thought I would try another animal. I chose a swan (obviously I hope) and am pretty happy with the result. I showed it to my 4 year-old nephew the other night and asked if he knew the type of bird. He looked at me completely straight-faced and said "a swamp".

There are a few things that I think I would tweek if I had another go at it, but I'm not quite sure about how to make the improvements. I like the body and wing shapes very much, but the beak is goofy. I think it might better if it were attached by hand after the body is sewn. I love the way the wings worked out. After sewing the wings and turning them inside out, I used my free-motion quilting foot and added the feather shapes. The baby swan was done sort of rough. I left the seems exposed and stitched in a black thread. The baby made the whole piece work much better as a toy. Betsy has had a lot of fun playing "mama and baby" games all day with them. For both, I might still add eyes, but maybe not.

What next? I don't know. I have a couple of ideas, but nothing real solid yet. Kinda strange. I usually am so anxious to start my next project because I have so many ideas for it. I am starting to feel like I should switch gears and start doing some crafting for the baby. Quilt? Crochet? Knit?

Part of my crafting problem right now is that I don't have a dedicated area to craft. Fabric is in the basement, open projects are in the family room, sewing machine is in the living room. It's just all over the place. I would love to be able to start something and be able to just leave it and then come back later and pick up right where I left off. Now, I have to have enough time to get to certain point (ie. get all pieces cut out) and then get it all cleaned up and put away. It takes me a little more motivation to get started this way.