Monday 15 February 2010

Chinese New Year - the year of the Dragon!


In honour of Chinese New Year we (I) decided to make a stuffed dragon for one of the Children's Centers. A great idea I hear you cry, but I only decided the week before the only session we could make it in, so I had to do a fair bit of prep myself so we could finnish it in 2 hours....

So I found and adapted a rather lovely design for a paper banner and traced it onto some cotton fabric: two sides of head, body and tail and 4 stuffed legs.
Although it was 'just' colouring in, the group enjoyed this simple pleasure and we discussed which colours to use where, so it was a great collective project. We used fabric pens which went on like a dream and simply iron on o hot setting to fix in place.


Kate had a go on the sewing machine....look at the concentration!

The finished body's after ironing, just before stitching.

Stuffed dragon feet, a rare Chinese delicacy?!

He's just about ready to go, we put some bells inside, wrapped up in a cotton bag so the stuffing doesn't jam them up.
So here he is!

Kung hei fat choi - Happy New Year!