Dragon Development

So here is my Dragon Xander with his rider Callista and, as promised, I'm going to tell you a bit about how I made them. 
I started with a wonderful dragon pattern by Melinda Small Patterson which you can find on her website Smallwork.com. 

 

I knew even before I began that I wanted to make some modifications. I wanted the hands and wings to be separate so I started by designing my own patterns for those and then I modified the head pattern to give it a thinner shape. I first made a muslin mock up and then cut out and stitched up the pieces in the material I'd chosen.

 At this point I realized that the hands were too small and the feet too big so it was back to the drawing board. Sigh...I was hoping to eliminate that with the muslin mockup but I just didn't see the problem at that point. I actually ended up redoing the wings and tweaking them a bit as well.

 I added quite a bit of armature to my dragon as the original pattern only had it in the arms and legs and the tail was filled with sand.  I added wires to the neck, tail, head, and fingers to begin with and then, because the legs had a tendency to splay and slump, I went back and put in hip armature so he could stand steady with a rider. That was fun...yeah no...but it worked and he stands pretty darn steady now! Finally I eliminated the mane, painted wooden beads for the eyes, added extra eyelids and some pointy fangs. Voila!

 I'm so so happy with the end result and I definitely learned a lot during the process!

How is it JULY already!?

What is it they say about the best laid plans? Sigh. My plan to update my blog more regularly this year has certainly been a bust so far. Half the year is gone already! How the heck did that happen?
I think it's because I've been pretty down in the dumps and having trouble getting my dollmaking mojo on track. The 2017 news of the world has been so overwhelmingly awful that it's been really hard to focus.  I have done some work though and I'll share a quick round up of that. 

First I made quite a quite a few of these little resistance pixies. They were my way to show my feelings about the state of things and a way to give back as well. Half of all the profits went to Planned Parenthood and I was very pleased to donate just over $500.00! (I'm still happy to make them so if you want one just let me know through the contact page. They are $60+shipping) 

 

       There were 3 bunnies with Peter Pan collars and hand knit accessories...

          and a couple of commissions. This happy little forest fairy... 

 

  

 and then then these two so sweet sisters for a very proud grandma.

 Lately I've been working on a project that I've been wanting to make for ages! Can you guess?

Yep! A Dragon!! I started with the pattern by Melinda Small Patterson but I made quite a few changes. I promise a blog post on all that next week! I'm really going to try to get back into the posting groove...hopefully more successfully this time! So what have you been working on lately?