Over the last week and a bit I’ve tackled the arms of the skeleton. The arms were easier to design and cut than the hands as they’re nice and big. They took a bit of time to sew (2 hours plus) and add stuffing to. I’m happy with how these have turned out.
I won’t be joining these together with stitches just yet as the bones will be too hard to store when they are all together.
You can read the post about the hands and more about the project on this post.
This year I was looking for a 365 day project to challenge myself. I almost chose 365 days of horror movies but though I might be a wreck after just a month, not to mention that some days I just couldn’t fit in a horror movie or find one to watch. Horror movies isn’t much of a project either. My partner always has good ideas and suggested I make a skeleton from felt. He didn’t think horror was a good idea as he doesn’t enjoy the genre.
I began the Skeleton around the start of the year with some sketches. It’s already been a struggle getting the sizes right and finding references for parts. Felt is a huge challenge with really tiny details as it is hard to cut small and make matching parts so small. I started with the hands and had to get creative with the scissors when my patterns were just too small to cut around. The bulk of the hands were done across about 4 hours but about another 2 or 3 hours needs to be added on top of that just sewing bits here and there and re-doing bits that went awry.
The Good Hand. The second one worked out way better than the first.
Both hands. One is very floppy (right) the other very stiff (left).
As I was making the phalanges I realised that making individual carpals was going to be bloody challenging as I would never get the sizes right so I decided to go with a solid piece under with details on top. Artistic licence has come into play here as some parts were so tiny and the felt was not cooperating and I’ve heard that sometimes done is better that perfect.
All up I’m pretty happy with how they turned out but I think the stiff hand might need a re-sew. I plan to do the arms next. Radius and Ulna.
Maybe I should try the horror thing out. Watch a month worth of Horror movies? Maybe I could do a month of horror movies and TV shows (American Horror Story is in my Netflix list) and see how I go.
I’ve been wanting to make laser cut wooden pieces for a while and recently decided “Okay, let’s do this.” I read through all of the instructions of how to set up the files on the Vector Etch site (the biz I used to do the laser cutting) and thought it was definitely something I could do. I painstakingly added all of the outlines to the drawings I’d already done, thought about the designs, made the lines the right size. The fun thing here is that I use Inkscape, it’s free software but is a little bit of a nightmare to use sometimes. I think I spent about 20 hours setting everything up and even then some of it went haywire converting to Illustrator at the other end.
I’m really pleased with the results and how fine the details are. There are still a few products coming to this range, some of these were first printed in the first lot but didn’t turn out right (bummer) and others I hadn’t event though of for the first lot.
I spent a fair bit of time sorting out the pelvis, below, and I’m so happy I did as I really love how it turned out.
Intestines never disappoint me and I’m really happy with this guy. He’s about 3 hours of work.
I was looking for something, a hand necklace, to replace one that sold and I found a bunch more brass anatomy. It was re-found, dug back up, surfaced again, something like that.
So I’m thinking I at least have to add a kidney and a brain into this mix.
These brass pieces were all made 2-5 years ago, nothing too recent and they are done batches of 5-10 at a time. The process is fairly involved and the etching part is done in a spray etcher, made by my partner.
The only piece of the collection I have kept for myself is the skull. Maybe next go around I’ll keep a hand and a ribs…
Your Organ Grinder 