I sewed myself a SeaHawk!

This logo:

is EVERYWHERE in Seattle. I really like it. As NFL logos go, I think we have one of the best. It's based on Pacific Northwest native art like this mask:

Image from Hudson Museum

So, inspired by Pacific Northwest native art I've encountered since moving here in 2010, oh yeah, and also inspired by the Seahhawks first-ever SUPER BOWL WIN this year, I decided to make myself a Seahawk this Halloween. Hopefully it will come in handy when we celebrate more wins in the future. 

Full disclosure:  I've never been a big football fan and neither has my husband. Last year though, we contracted Seahawk fever and I get it now. Suddenly we find ourselves having to be home on game days, on the edge of our seats shouting at the television to Go!Go!Go! I couldn't care less when any other team plays, but the Seahawks have my heart.

Sneak Peek: I'm not saying it's magic, but I put it on at the end of Sundays game against the Carolina Panthers and within a minute the Seahawks scored a tie-breaking touchdown. The next week they won again. Coincidence? 

Maybe, but I like to think it's the power of the 12th Man infused in my hawk-head that helped.

I'm getting ahead of myself though. First I want to show you how I made it. I will title this tutorial: 

How to Make Yourself the Most Popular Person in Seattle, in 157 Complicated Steps.

 First, (fingers crossed the NFL doesn't sue me) I took the logo into Photoshop, made it grayscale, brightened it, and enlarged it 725%.

 

 

Then I printed it out section by section, pieced it together like a puzzle, and pasted the pages together to be my pattern.

Next, I put my pattern on top of 2 layers of dark blue fleece and cut out the shape of the head and beak...

and cut out 2 layers of grey fleece for the neck. Later I cut out 2 green eyes.

Then I ironed Heat n Bond Lite to the backs of each piece.  DO NOT iron fleece directly. To prevent burning and melting the fleece always cover your fleece with thin cotton fabric before ironing.

Here are both layers of the blue and grey fleece with Heat n Bond paper adhered. This paper makes it much easier to cut out the details.

Next, I pinned the pattern to both layers of fleece and cut out the details.

I suppose an Exacto knife or rotary cutter would come in handy here, but I didn't have one available so I just used scissors.  After several years and several hundred personalized banners, pillows, etc., I have plenty of practice doing this.

After I cut out all the parts, I ironed them onto a white background (again using a thin sheet of cotton fabric between my iron and the fleece).

Next, I machine-embroidered the edges of my appliqued fabric using a zig-zag stitch (width 5, length 1).

Then I had myself two 4-feet long appliqued Seahawk heads. I put the two pieces atop one another, outsides facing in, lined up their beaks and back, and straight-stitched around the outside edge leaving the neck-area open. THAT was the easy part. 

Here is the part where I start to wing it.

I've seen many elaborate native Pacific Northwest masks in museums and marveled at both the art and engineering that native people put into these. How did they get a big heavy beak to balance atop their heads without falling forward?  When I cut my inch-thick foam in the shape of a hawk head and placed it atop my head it was all floppy.

I had to give it bones. I needed something strong and lightweight and found an old political yard sign in our garage. I cut it into strips and glued them together on both sides and hot-glued them onto my foam. My hawk-head is now reinforced with the bones of our governor's yard signs.

Next, so there wouldn't be any sharp parts poking through and to reinforce it even more, I hot glued a layer of batting overtop.

 

Side note, it looks like a gun, doesn't it? Ironically, the day I spent in my studio working on this  Pacific Northwest-inspired gun-shaped costume, I was listening to the local news report the latest school shooting unfolding less than an hour from my house. A Native American boy from the local Tulaplip tribe purposefully shot and killed 3 friends at his lunch table, and then shot and killed himself.  I really hate guns. But I digress... 

Then I cut out 2 semi-circle shapes of foam and hand-stitched them to the space I cut out for my head to go.

and carefully turned the appliqued Seahawk face(s) right-side-out and inserted my foam structure.

After trying it on, I realized there was no way it could simply be a hat. I needed some sort of harness to counter-weigh the heaviness of the protruding beak. After much trial and error, I decided to hand-stitch a rectangle of foam to the back of the head and machine-stitch some green fleece to the bottom of my appliqued Seahawk to cover up the foam. I also filled in the area around the head space with several handfulls of Polyfil. Here's a bird's eye view of the underneath:

The head-hole proved too deep though - it pressed down on my glasses and ears when I tried to wear it - so I filled it with more Polyfil and hand-stitched a piece of fleece to cover it.

So now it sits comfortably atop my noggin.

 

It's harnessed through slots in the back with a karate belt I got a garage sale years ago (thinking I'd use it for tote bag straps someday). It just so happened to be green and blue and wrap around my waist 3 times perfectly, so I stitched on a strip of velcro at the ends to secure it and viola! I finally achieved a comfortable fit!

I wore it for our downtown trick-or-treating and got lots of honks and waves and GO HAWKS! and kids wanting to take their picture with me. My kids wore their Spy vs. Spy costumes I made last year and together we looked like a mama and her baby birds. Here's a pic I took of the 3 of us in the mirrored window of a tattoo shop.

Maybe next year I'll make a full-bodied suit to go with it.  For now, I simply I threw on a fringed poncho sweater I found that looked like wings and added some see-through sparkly fabric for the body. I folded the sparkly fabric over once at the edge and straight-stitched a channel, inserted some skinny elastic and put both ends of the elastic through a button. 

 

 This way, I can pull the elastic through the button and gather the fabric atop my head, or loosen the elastic and let the fabric drape down in front and show my face. I wish all my costume-bodies came together this quickly and easily!

This year my kids have decided to forgo the duo theme they've had going the last 3 years as Finn and Jake, Mordecai and Rigby, and Spy vs. Spy. Sage wants to be an oldskool Gameboy and McKenna wants to be a My Little Pony. I hope I can crank them out in time.

EtsyRAIN Handmade Holiday Recap

The day after Thanksgiving I lugged all my kokoleo wares into the heart of downtown Seattle and spent my Black Friday and Small Business Saturday here:

photo from the EtsyRAIN facebook page

at the EtsyRain Handmade Holiday Show located at the Marion Oliver McCaw Hall, home of the Seattle Symphony and Pacific Northwest Ballet. The show was in their magnificent lobby. Here's my booth:

and my tower-o-accessories and coffee mug pin cushions:

The view from where I sat:

and the view from  the second floor...

 Friday was super rainy, but we still had a line outside at the beginning and it ended up breaking previous Etsy RAIN event attendance records. I didn't take many pictures during the event because I was too busy using my phone to process credit cards for kokoleo purchases. This was my first time using my Intuit GoPayment App and I love it. Who wouldn't love money instantly deposited into your bank account? I made all my money back and then some on the first day and made even more today. The only thing I like better  is knowing a whole bunch of kokoleos are going to be wrapped and given as gifts this Christmas.

Speaking of gifts, I got a few for my family too. Sage is going to love this piece of wall art from pixelparty:

And from Kate Endle, I bought McKenna this calendar and Casper Babypants CD.

I also did some great trades, like a coffee mug pin cushion for this ceramic snowflake ornament (though I can't remember her business' name).

And I traded a necktie headband for a fabulous assortment of  treats from Sweet Coconut Bakery. I tried to save them for my family, but ended up eating most of them at the show.

  

I trade some stuffed ducks I made (for a Renton River Days window display) for this necklace by Cyncity and some magnets I'm going to put in my husband's stocking:

And from Scary White Girl Designs, I traded a Mickey Mouse sundress for this flower barrette and some arm warmers.

It's nice to be home with a lighter kokoleo load, money in my pocket, and a bunch of new handmade things. My best sellers of the show were my Seattle baby tees I whipped together just last week.

Driving home tonight after a fun show, I appreciate this skyline even more.

The Day We Made a Mosaic

Back in January I wrote this blog post about my vision for a mosaic in our Children's Park. Guess what? We did it! I applied for a grant through the City of Renton's Neighborhood Grant Program and it was approved. We were awarded $700 to install a one-of-a-kind mosaic in our park. My goal was to have it be a community-driven project (I certainly couldn't do it alone) and have as many people in the neighborhood as possible contribute items to be included in the mosaic. Here's the blurb I wrote for our homeowner's newsletter:

Victoria Park Receives Art Grant

Our Children's Park is a hidden gem in Victoria Park. Last year, a group of parents came up with an idea to create a mosaic in the park. A proposal was written and a grant was applied for through the City of Renton's Neighborhood Grant Program and it was approved! The Victoria Park Homeowners Association has been awarded $700 to create a one-of-a-kind community-based art project in our park.

We want you to be a part of this project too! The idea is to create a mosaic around the bench that faces the swing set. In it, we plan to embed colorful marbles, tiles, rocks, and tiny trinkets. We are asking every person who lives in Victoria Park to contribute one item to this project. Items should be no larger than 2 inches across and non-biodegradeable. Examples are: A rock from your front lawn, a marble, a plastic or metal toy, a broken tile or dish, and other small, solid trinkets. Please note your item will not be returned, but instead it will be embedded in cement and on display forever in the Children's Park.

Little by little, donations were dropped of in a basket on our porch - coins, toys, broken jewelry, seashells and rocks - and over the course of the summer I began amassing mosaic materials at thrift stores, yard sales and antique shops - marbles, tiles, and polished glass stones.

In mid-August we finally broke ground...

and the friends who encouraged me to apply for the grant came out to help us.

There was no going back at this point. We dug a 12 ft. by 12 ft. hole 10 inches deep. We couldn't leave it like that for long, so we scheduled a date when we could all meet again and install the mosaic. Over the next two weeks I shopped for supplies, arranged for cement delivery (54 bags!), bought water and ordered 10 large pizzas to be delivered that evening. A few days before we were scheduled to install the mosaic, I stopped by Upton Glassworks in downtown Renton to ask if they had any broken bits or leftovers that we could include in our design. To my surprise, the owner, Paul Sullivan, brought out a big heavy box full of beautiful glass orbs and said we could have it. Free!

I knew then that we were ready to begin our project. These were the big, beautiful, colorful, Renton-made objects we needed to make our mosaic complete.

September 16th was the day we converged on the park with shovels and wheelbarrows to make it happen.The kids helped mix cement (but soon learned how tiring it was and quickly left to play on the playground while the grownups did the dirty work.)

While the big strong men mixed and poured the concrete...

The moms started laying out the materials and coming up with a design so we could easily transfer it when the cement was ready.

And suddenly it was! 

Everyone quickly tackled certain parts...

The area in front of the bench ended up a "sealife" theme with fish, crabs, frogs, turtles, an octopus and a mermaid...

surrounded by an ocean of clear, blue, and green marbles...

and a "barrier reef" of seashells.

Then we moved on to the marbles...

 

And finally we let the kids place their toys and all the trinkets we'd collected into the cement.

Then we had a pizza party. (I factored this expense into our budget when I applied for the grant.)

Yeah, my neighbors are awesome. I'm pretty lucky to live here.

A week later we applied a few layers of cement sealant to strengthen and weatherproof it. I also threw in some glitter to add some sparkle.

 

And now it's done!

We walk past it everyday on our walk to school...

and remember that one day in 2012

 

...when we made a mosaic.