Something Different

Since I don't have any quilting photos to show this weekend I thought I'd share some of the crocheted/resin animals I created several years ago. It all started in 1993 when I found a 12-14" resin and cloth bear in the Wal-mart craft department. I had a daughter-in-law that collected bears and I thought I might be able to crochet a dress for the bear as a gift for her. I didn't have a pattern, and just made it up as I went along. It turned out like this :

That was fun..so I bought three rabbits and crocheted outfits for my granddaughters. They looked like this:

I guess then I was hooked. I discovered smaller (about 4" tall) resin/cloth animals of all sorts and bought some of each. My grandmother always crocheted amazing outfits for Barbie dolls without the benefit of patterns and I could never understand how she was able to do that. I must have been channeling her gift for awhile because it came very easily to me when I started working with these little animals. Grandma was in the last months of her life, though we didn't know it, and I loved sending her pictures of each new animal.

I one point I thought I should be trying to write the patterns down, maybe even try to market them. But I quickly discovered that just took all the fun and spontaneity out of it for me. So there are no patterns. I doubt that I could do it now, but at that time the juices flowed freely.

All of the following were made between Nov 1993 and summer 1994. Most were given to family and friends as gifts.

Almost as soon as I got hooked on making these, Wal-mart quit carrying the little animals. But my daughter-in-law worked at a Ben Franklin store and her boss was kind enough to special order me a LOT of them. Anyone care to guess how many I have in totes on my bag porch that will probably never get used now that I am quilting?