To begin my “I AM” project, I sketched some ideas for what I wanted to make. After making 12 sketches of the front, side, and back of each animal, I chose my top 3 and drew them in greater detail. After I talked to Kirk about my 3 options, he helped me choose which one out of the 3 final animals to create for my project.
Next, I thought about how I was going to go about creating the shapes for the pattern of my I AM, and started creating them. I first drew the pattern on pattern paper, indicating the S.A., grain line, number of pattern pieces, my name, and part of the body.
I then transferred the patterns and all of their information onto muslin.
I then sewed the pieces together, fixing errors I encountered in the process, including making certain pieces smaller or larger, or in the case of this picture, changing the slope of a curve.
After assembling the pieces, turning it right-side-in, stuffing it with polyfill, and using a closing stitch to close it off, I had my prototype.
Once it came time to make my final I AM, I realized I wanted to make it slightly smaller. Because of that, I had to redo all of my pattern pieces. I also included pattern pieces for the arms, ears and feet, and changed the pattern of the head.
These were the fabrics I chose to work with:
The one on the left is cotton and the one on the right is a knit.
After transferring the patterns to these fabrics, I began cutting them out and sewing them together.
I sewed spikes along the seam in the back with a swatch of pleather fabric I got at the fabric store
I cut out an oval shape to put on the stomach of my I AM and hand-stitched it onto the body.
Using the seams in the softball-like pattern of the head, I sewed the stuffed ears onto the head. Then I sewed the head onto the finished body.
I made eyes out of the leftover pleather.
I put my I AM words on muslin and into the belly of my animal
Ultimately, I ended up with my finished I AM
Throughout the process of creating my final product, I ended up running into several problems that I later solved. Although I had to make a lot of changes to the original pattern, the hardest part about this project for me was coming up with the pattern at first, because I was starting from nothing. When I was altering the pattern, I had a basis to edit and figure out the next steps, however when I was creating the first pattern, I had next to nothing to work off of. In spite of this, I was able to come up with a relatively successful pattern that, given the circumstances, did not need that much altering to become a final pattern. The hardest part to sew for me was the head, because I had to sew a baseball pattern, which is a perpetual curve that is very small. Although this was very hard for me to do, I ended up doing it without making any mistakes. Overall, I am very happy with the final product and I am proud of the work I put into it.
Great job and good writing. I am so happy for you and with the work!