Giraffe – Hopefully Creative

Giraffe Version 3

Giraffes are for babies.

Months ago, I had a chat with the colleague who made the Safari Mobile about what she wanted to get for a gift. I showed her some of the stuffed animals from the past and she immediately fell in love with the giraffe (and who wouldn’t!). So I set out to make the giraffe during my holiday in June. She asked for realistic colours so I googled giraffe and set out to find some brown felt. I chose to do his body in the off-white that I had, because none of the other colours would really work. The horns, legs and tail would be brown, with his snout and inner ears white.

As usual, a Choly Knight/Sew Desu Ne pattern comes together really easily. It starts with meditative stitching of the spots and other details. Then sewing the pieces together where all the notches actually line up and then stuffing it to within an inch of its life. Once I had the head and the body both finished, I tried to pin the head on to see where it should go. It was a little lopsided and it looked so cute that I left it that way and sewed it on crooked. Look at his little face! I love him so much and I hope his new family will too.

Double Giraffe

Two little giraffes, orange for a baby and one with a rainbow.

Sometimes things can be serendipitous. This combination of events happened a few weeks ago. My colleague was telling me about the wallpaper they had been hanging in their soon-to-be-born grandchild’s room. It had giraffes on it and her husband was making a cut out of two giraffes to have the grandchild’s name on it. I remembered seeing a free pattern of a giraffe come by from CholyKnight/SewDesuNe like a week before. I showed the giraffe pattern and we both fell in love.

One of those giraffes needed to grace the new nursery. It just had to happen. So I got to work, asked for some inspiration for the spots, and they had the brilliant idea of doing two colours. The pattern came together fairly easily, and is just adorable. I brought it with me the next Monday when we also celebrated her birthday. Two or three days later and the baby was born, everything was just in time. Serendipity.

While I was making this first one however, I actually looked at the pattern image. It had a pastel-rainbow spotted giraffe on it. My first instinct was that ‘I can do that too!’, so I cut out a second giraffe at the same time as the first. It’s got bright rainbow spots on its side and some more blue/green spots on his head. Again, came together easily and practically at the same time as the orange one.

This one is still hanging out at home until corona has cooled down enough again to bring him elsewhere. Not sure when that will ever be. It does feel like we are stuck in these corona-times for the foreseeable future again.

Well, at least that means easy access to the sewing machine and the opportunity to make more little plushies. I know that there will be a pikachu in the future now that I’ve bought some yellow fluff-stuff!

More Paper

Ski Rex!

The first set of Dinosaurs only gave rise to more paper things. I started with Ski Rex, the same dinosaur, but now connected to Skis. You turn the crank and it skis over the top of the box. It’s wonderful and since I printed a blank dinosaur on blue paper, it’s blue! The original was Pink and that just wasn’t going to happen. This pattern is available here.

Globe!

Afterwards, I started on a Globe & Moon set. This was not an automata and doesn’t have a crank, but it’s pretty cute. Apparently the Moon is to the scale of the Globe. You can turn the globe if you want to, and I wanted to.. This is the link.

Double Giraffes!

Last but not least, I made the double Giraffe automaton, twice. With the first one, which is at the end of the video, I did not make the neck holes large enough, so the necks get stuck in there. Then I also placed the giraffes too close together so their heads bump all the time. The second version works much better and is so Giraffy! The pattern is here.

I still have a bunch of goats printed but not cut or assembled, we’ll see when I get to those.

Papercrafts

For some reason, three months from now is a really nice time to fornicate. At least that’s what I assume. I had a massive 5 known birthdays in the last week alone. i.e. 5 people who I knew celebrated one year further in their lives. While I did not go or organise any parties (It was my birthday too, the), I did make some cards for some of those people. I had found some animal print origami paper in my box of craftstuff. Including instructions on how to fold a giraffe. Ok, while I’m not sure it really classifies as origami, as the giraffe is made up of two pieces and requires glue, it still looks nice. I took pictures of 2 out of 3 cards,because I had already posted one of them. The text on the front means congratulations (with your birthday), it’s in Dutch on these cards. You might also wonder why my giraffe, elephant and bird don’t have their own print. Well.. I wanted to change it up a little, and still had some zebra paper left. The bird and the elephant I’ve known for years, out of an origami book I got from my aunt for my birthday several million years ago. I know the bird and elephant by heart, which always impresses people. I’m going to make a giant elephant once I can find large enough paper. Anyways, here are those cards. I did enjoy myself making them, and see more of this in the future.

Tag: Giraffe