School Fabrics

Spoonflower is so awesome. I have a new addiction. It is so immensely weird and cool and satisfying to see something you imagined as a genuine real life fabric.

I picked up my samples from the post office today. I'd ordered the Pencil Pals before, my Donald-in-Mathmagic-Land-inspired entry into the "School Supplies" contest, but it failed to arrive. The envelope arrived, slit open at the end with no swatch inside. I told the lovely Spoonflower people and they gave me credit for it, which was super nice. I was happy to finally see it!

One thing I'm finding it hard to get the hang of is size. I don't know how big I want my design to print. This one I did in two sizes to find out. This one might be a more useful size.

Plus my plane shapes fabric swatch came too. There's actually another column of shapes that don't fit onto the swatch - the trapezium, parallelogram and ellipse. Sometimes you just can't stop the maths stuff from being in your brain.

Also two things which I won't show you yet. One will have to wait until I get it installed and one until after the present is given. Yay! Secrets!

These 3 designs are now FOR SALE at Spoonflower. I have a "Shop" now, apparently. You should check it out, it is to be found here. I'd better get it a banner because right now it has my name hovering in a big white box!

Plane Shapes Soft Cube

Who doesn't want their kids to play with toys that teach them stuff about maths? Crazy people, maybe. So anyway I can't even remember how this idea started but I've been playing around with Spoonflower, as I mentioned before with my Pencil Pals design, and I've been working on these shapes for a while.

I designed them with the idea in mind of making a soft cube toy, and maybe later a dodecahedron (I have 12 shapes ready but only the first 6 in swatch form yet).

Excited about ordering organic cotton, I ordered them in the organic cotton knit, and then realised what a fool I was when they came! I don't know, but I'm pretty sure a real stretchy fabric won't make a nice crisp cube. So I used some iron-on interfacing that I had. Actually that has turned out pretty well because the panels have a nice soft knit feel but a solidness behind that.

On the downside though in the process of interfacing, some of the fabric stretched. The square is not so square anymore and the circle is not so circular. So next time, not knit.

Still I'm really proud of it. Time to order some more swatches and make another one. Or try the dodecahedron challenge.

Luckily since this guy is finished, I'm allowed to buy more swatches. I've set up a new self-control system - I must finish 2 craft items before I can buy resources for another. There was a period of ebay-related incidents.

Ok it isn't finished finished, but it's blog finished (fabulous expression, courtesy of Ric-Rac). The reason is that I'm thinking about getting a rattle to put inside. Although I'll have to finish two more things to buy the rattle. Darnit.

Making a Trapezium Puppet

You can check out my Teaching Blog for the "Why" of this project, and here I'll stick to the how and showing off the results.

Firstly, for some inspiration from the highest expert, watch Jim Henson talk about designing simple puppets. I also checked out the galleries at Project Puppet and the work of Australian puppet-maker PuppetOODle for ideas about the look, particularly the eyes. This HowStuffWorks article was also great although I haven't used much of that information in this project.

Here is my trapezium puppet in all his glory:

The good:

• Making the trapezium shape in 3D was very easy. I cut two of my trapezium shape and a long thin rectangle to go all around the outside between the two trapeziums. Thanks to looking up how exactly to clip corners he has a good crisp shape that I'm happy with.
• The eyes are slightly-squished table-tennis balls painted and with glued-on felt eyelids and I'm pretty happy with those, and the button I found for his nose.

The bad:

• I struggled from the start with the idea of adapting a sock-style puppet to something with a flat face. I think in future it might actually be better to give the shapes a more 3D, face-like face, if that makes any sense.
• I sort of sewed a sock-like structure for the hand onto the back of the mouth, and it left me with lips, which I wasn't planning on or keen on. It works ok but was a pain and is quite unfinished.
• I was getting more and more unhappy with him as I went so his face is hot-glue-gunned on and you can tell!

I'm pretty unhappy with him really but if I remind myself that he is a first go, a kind of test of the idea then I feel better. And the kids liked him, so I guess that's what matters.

Mr. Monk doesn't seem to mind him either, but Mr. Trapezium looks a little shocked at this strange creature sleeping next to him.