Iorek's Birthday Sweatshirt

Iorek's almost finished Birthday Sweatshirt!

Iorek got a black zip up hoody too for his birthday back in April.  His mom, Dianah, just got one for hers too!  Unlike Di's, Ioreks is all hand sewn.  There were so many little tiny pieces that I figured hand sewing would be easiest and it was.  It went super fast once I had all the details cut out.

Work in progress.

I started with a letterpress card that Jasper got for his birthday.  It inspired me to see if I could somewhat duplicate the design idea onto fabric.  This is what I came up with and I am pleased. 

Face details all hand sewn on.

You can see above that I toyed with many ideas about how to do the little details.  I ended up going with non black horns to get more contrast.  Again here, I used wool felt.  Always have, always will.  When it gets washed in hot soapy water it will just all the more bind together and be well held and bound.

Face hand sewn to "mane."

I cut out the mane after I had the face sewn on.  For some reason this made it easier for me.  I guess I forgot to keep taking pictures of the end of the process but you can see by the finished photos of Iorek in his sweatshirt what it turned out like.

Mane hand sewn to horns.

I debated about adding feet.  Something similar to the hands/claws.  In the end I didn't do feet/claws and I like it.  Kinda like he's a monster in his jammies!

"I can make you smile!"

The only thing about hand sewing is that you just gotta be ready to switch colors a lot.  I wanted to match most of my thread to the felt color but you could do a contrast thread color and use it on all of the felt.  If you just get a bunch of needles threaded to begin with then it doesn't seem so daunting to stop and thread a new color each time you need it.

Ready to run the Top Pot Donuts Kids 1K!

The 03 has two functions.  It mimics the sporty gear we see all over the place now so it makes it a bit trendy, if I do dare say so myself.  And, it is Iorek and Jasper and our friend Rowan's birth year.  I am working on Jasper and Rowan's sweatshirts now.  They will be "monsters" too, similar, but different, and all with the 03 on the other side.  They plan to be a little gang of seven year old monsters!  They already are that gang, little monsters, but now they have uniforms!

Jasper and Iorek cracking up.

I adore these two kiddos.  This is how they are when they are together.  Laughing, giggling, smiling, bossing, singing, making music, doing magic shows, investigating, exploring, reading, explaining, spazzing, tumbling, negotiating, bickering, loving and still laughing.  We adore you Iorek!  Thanks for being Jasper's good, good, buddy!  You are an official 7 year old monster gang member!  Congratulations!