Yes, I name my crafts

When I am creating a robot or a star or a skunk, even in an assembly line they have their own personality, their own life. The fabrics may seem random, but I feel each piece tells me which ones they want, like a child dressing themselves. I use a pattern I made from paper grocery bags, but the tracing and seam allowance takes on it's own path as well, its as if it were a loose interpretation of the pattern.

Once I get them dressed, it's all about the face. Sewing on the eyes particularly really adds that breath of life, and it is my favorite step. I always freehand the eyes and only cut them one set at a time. This is a slow step, it only takes a sec to sew them on, but this is where I take a moment to appreciate each one like a little newborn I'm going to send out to a loving family. I know, Cheeze Louise, but I'm extra sappy when I'm pregnant.

So the names, where do they come from?

With the Robots, I initially had 60 of them, so as I took pictures of them I stuck little dot tags on them A-Z, AA-whatever, and then named the photos accordingly. I have a book of Sci Fi Baby Names that I recieved from my sister in law when I was pregnant with my first, and I just picked them out alphabetically. They all came from movies or books or tv series, and had a description of the character. I tried to choose ones that fit. Some were boys, some were girls, some were ambiguous and recieved names accordingly. The ones that got into the double letters got double names, with a hyphen, and that gave me a little creative license to mix and match. My favorite was Olivia-Wan.

So then were the stars, and those I chose just by the way they looked, mostly their lips, or the way they held their "arms" or their eye shape. Their faces made it easy. They were like naming your stuffed animals as a kid.

The Skunks took a more interesting and personal twist. Yes, these are the Skunks for Skyla. They are all Albino Skunks in reference of the Albino Skunk Bluegrass Festival, http://www.skunkfest.com/ , and are made for the ASBF founders' grandaughter and Olympic hopeful Skyla Powers http://skylasjourney.blogspot.com/ (competing in Poland this week!) I donate a portion from each skunk directly to her.

The Skunks are all made from canvas, so I named them for their distinctive stripes. I used the same three giant storage boxes of scrap fabrics and goodwill clothes (ALL WASHED!!!) that I used for the pieces of the robots. But each piece of fabric has a unique history of its aquisition. There are the plaids from flannel shirts I used to make myself a modern grunge skirt for my bands cd release party last year. Those fabrics gave birth to Kurt and Eddie. Yeah. They do smell a little like Teen Spirit. (Which is great for a Skunk)

There are the fabrics I recieved from my mother in law, Some hers, Some quilting fabric from her mother. They birthed the two lovely skunks Judy and Blanche, respectively.

There is Wilmington, from a fabric I bought to make pillows when I first graduated college and moved to the beach, I thought it looked sandy. So you see the trend.

Well, above I included a few pics, see if you can guess the skunk with the fabric described. I tried to get some of the robots with their nametag visible for your enjoyment as well.

Thanks for indulging me with the read, naming my crafts really gives you that extra ingredient, listed in my shop item materials as "love." (Yeah yeah, Sap)

Feel free to click to the right on my etsy store to go spy on the items listed, and look at their names, (no purchase necessary, you can peek away, I'll never know it was you!) Feel free to post a comment here or convo me on etsy if you want to know the history behind any of the specific names. Now, if I can only choose a name for this baby that is going to come out of me in 8 weeks, I'll really have something to blog about!