Count Louis LeStat Wafflebuns

You may remember a couple years ago I created a little lamb for a friend: Pete T Sheep. He went traveling with me to Egypt and a couple other places. He also travelled with some other people when they went to far off places. So when I was about to set forth on a three week trip to England, Scotland and Ireland I asked my friend if I could take Pete with me. Unfortunately Pete had a run in with my buddy's cat and I'm horribly allergic to cats so Pete couldn't make the trip.

I decided I'd have to make my own travel buddy.  It was during waffle week when I had the following picture as my Facebook profile pic:


I found the picture on google and have no idea who made it or why, but you have to admit it's pretty awesome. When I asked my Facebook friends what I should make for my travel buddy someone suggested I make the waffle eating vampire bunny.

So I searched for bunny softie patterns and this is what I found on Craft Passion:


A little on the cutesy side, but it worked. The pattern is made from socks. I altered it slightly to get rid of the droopy ears. It ended up taking about three socks because I had to redo a couple things and because I ended up using the toes of the socks and some pink felt for the ears.

At first I wasn't sure how I was gonna do the ears so he looked kind of like a baby seal.



I put a little packet of rice in his bum to keep him from falling over. I was going to use sugar but then I thought I'd have issues going through security at the airport. I didn't want them tearing him apart thinking I was smuggling cocaine.

Here he is with ears:


His waffle is make of felt.

It took awhile to find something to use for the teeth, but eventually I found something in the beading aisle at Ben Franklin that worked:



And here's some pics on the trip:










I also made a travel turtle for my sister. And we picked up a loch ness monster in Scotland and a little lamb in Ireland:

Mice

CATS has closed.

While I am somewhat relieved that it is done, I am also going to miss it a lot. It was over four months of working very closely with a great group of people and what we put together was amazing.  It was a lot of work and I didn’t have much time for anything else – I didn’t blog much as you may have noticed (I also didn’t see much of my family) – but I learned a lot, lost some weight, got back into shape, improved my singing, learned how to do face painting, and performed in CATS (holy crap!). 

The show sold out its entire 3-weekend run (they even added 2 shows to the last weekend – ouch) and unfortunately we were not given an extension. I don’t know why, it seemed entirely viable, and overall a really good idea – we’ve never sold out a whole run of a show. Ever. Like in the entire 80+ year history of the Iao Theater (ok, Deep Throat might have, I really don’t know). I’m kind of still recovering, but hopefully soon I’ll get back to crafting. Here are some things I’ve got to do/blog about:

Renovations
Clean/organize sewing room
Quilt for Annie
Quilt for me
Chicago (the musical – hopefully, I’m waiting to hear if I’m costuming it)

I’m sure there’s more that I’m forgetting, and probably more I’ll come up with out of the blue.

Something that I can talk about now is a project I did closing weekend of the show when I wasn’t at the theater. As gifts for the cast/crew I decided to make mini versions of George, the remote control mouse I made for Kitty Playtime. They aren’t really mini version since George is the extra large version. I used the same pattern, just in the original size. At first I was just planning to use the same colors as George, but then got ambitious and decided to make them more individualized.  Each cat had a main color and accent colors as part of their costume, so I used those for the body/ears/tail.  On a lot of them I also added stripes since most of the cats’ unitards had airbrushing on them. 

 

I ended up making over 30 mice and fortunately had help from my mom, my sister, and a friend.  This isn’t all of them, but it’s the entire cast (minus me) and the pit singers. I gave the crew black mice (theater tech crews wear blacks on stage so they are less noticeable), and the stage manager got the original George since she was the one controlling him every night. 

The director got a sparkly pin stripe mouse with glasses (he made the glasses out of a bobby pin, I sewed them on) and the musical director got a red satin mouse.

Overall everyone was pretty excited about their mice and everyone has promised to take their mice with them on trips and take pictures with them (a la me and Pete). I myself got this:

It’s a cocktail olive. In CATS theirs a play within a play that the cats put on about Growltiger, a pirate, who is betrayed by a woman and made to walk the plank by the Siamese. I played Genghis, the leader of the Siamese. I got a phallic hat and sword that was painted green so that it looked like a cocktail sword (the proportions were all over the place in this show). While I was making George I decided that I should also make a cocktail olive to go on my cocktail sword.  I don’t know if anyone watching the show noticed (I took it off the sword as part of my choreography) but it was there nonetheless.

The olive was made from a fabric Easter egg pattern.  I left a slit open on two sides and inserted a tube to keep the stuffing in (you can't really see the slits, but they kinda make the olive look a little inappropriate) and filled the top in with red felt to make the pimento.

R/C Mouse

So, if you didn't know yet we are doing CATS at the theater. I'm in it as Carbuckety (they call me Bucket). It's normally a man's role, but I'm awesome enough to play a male role feminine. I'm also Assistant Choreographer so I've been up to my eyeballs in dancing kitties for the last month or so - hence the lack of crafting and blogging.  But I can't escape my crafty-ass nature for too long, so this is a project from CATS.

In CATS, the end of intermission is "Kitty Playtime." Some of the cats come out and play with the audience, or some kitty toys onstage.  One of the toys is a wind-up mouse.

Last year when we did The Wizard of Oz ballet I made Toto (he was a big version of Pete the Sheep). There was a Toto that Dorothy carried in her basket, and a Toto that was built over a Remote control car so it could run across the stage at one point.  So taking my knowledge of softie making, and softie making with R/C cars I volunteered to make the wind-up mouse.

The first step was finding the car.  When I made Toto we had an R/C motocross guy that one of the boys in the show had, and it proved to be odd to work with.  I went to Walmart to find a car and got a lifted truck for about $10. I figured the lifted-ness of the truck would make it easy to hide. However, the $10 truck proved to be worth the cheap price. It didn't work. It'd go forward a couple inches and stop. Grrr.

So I went to Amazon to find something better and found this:

 

It's a Morphibian and it's recommended ages are 5-9 so I figured it would be nice and easy to use. I picked because it's meant to run in water and on different types of surfaces.  While obviously I don't intend to put it in the water, the stage is going to have an odd texture because of the dancing and sliding in the show.  Also, the colors aren't too bright so if some of it shows it won't be a problem.

Also, when I got it and read the instructions, it turns out that the top comes off to access the batteries.  Since there's an extra cover I can just leave the top off and it will make a nicer base for the mouse.

My softie pattern making skills aren't too fabulous so after failing at making a pattern I decided to scour the internet for something.  I found a pattern for a real cat toy and decided to enlarge it. A lot.

So here's the mouse body. It's about 4-5 times bigger than the pattern:

Next I added felt ears, button eyes and pipe-cleaner whiskers.

 

Isn't he a cutie? I will love him and squeeze him and call him George.

The tail is also made from pipe-cleaners, but I wrapped them around the little tube that's supposed to support the antenna for the car.  That way the antenna will be out of the way and not just shoved under the mouse.

Antenna tube and tail (doesn't he look kinda like a toaster from the back?)

Antenna tube and tail with antenna inserted

To attach him to the car I've sewed on an elastic band along his tummy.  He needs to be easily removable so that the batteries can be replaced.

And here he is, George the R/C Mouse:

Yay Kitty Playtime!!  Watch out George, we're coming for you.

Pete

Meet Pete:

Pete and I are headed to Egypt. This may be taken literally or it may mean that I’m going crazy, you’ll have to stay tuned to find out.

Pete is my friend Aly’s Choreography Lamb. I made Pete from a free lambkin softie pattern from allsorts. Pete is a “choreography” lamb because he is made from a “choreography” sweater (ie: a sweater worn while choreographing) which had a special meaning to Aly and was used in the creation of Ren’s quilt.

I will try to provide updates on the adventures that Pete and I have based on internet availability during our journey. However, you may just have to wait until we get back to find out what happened.