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!

Family in felt

J.found a Russian doll in this lovely Japanese book I had taken into class (even now I have linked to this book, not sure how useful it is, I bought mine from the USA last year).  J loved it sooo much, she enlarged it a number of times and made a family.  Week one and they looked like this:

One week later - Wow! I think the trouble with making these lovely small things is you get quite addicted. Gotta do another one, gotta do another one..... Until you have finished your project and damn it, you have to do another one!