Dala Horse Inspiration

This has been a hectic week, and it's been frustrating to have so many handcrafted items that I've wanted to make--and some inspiring materials to make them with--and so little time to devote to them. However, late last night I chanced upon a Flickr image that inspired me to do some seriously late-night crafting.

The gorgeous repeating pattern of the Dala horse shown above is by Alline Luz, a Brazilian illustrator. She works at a wildly inventive illustration and graphic design studio called Mopa. How cool is it that a Brazilian illustrator produced an illustration based on a Swedish folkloric image, which in turn inspired an American crafter (of Mexican origin) to make something?

The item in question is a soft stuffed creature with extravagant embroidery that's flitted through my head in various incarnations for several weeks (a chicken? a rabbit? a pig?). I've had an angora sweater in a deep red that I've been wanting to transform into a softie (see Softies Central for all things softie), and last night the Dala horse illustration pushed me to figure out how to make a horse in soft, three-dimensional form.

To do so, I copied the illustration from Flickr to my hard drive. Then I uploaded it to Powerpoint (lame, I know, but I don't have Photoshop, and it's the easiest image editor I have) and cropped one of the horse images and enlarged it. I traced the outline of the horse and used the pattern to cut two pieces from the red angora sweater, one side flipped, of course. Using a tip from maya*made, I traced the shape of the horse's legs to create a pattern for the bottom gusset and traced the horses ears, muzzle, and mane to create a pattern for the head gusset. I sewed the pieces together on my machine, which was a tricky puzzle with all the pins and seams coming together.

I wish I could say that my late-night crafting yielded a finished product, but my little Dala horse isn't done yet. Here's a peek at the prototype for my work in progress:

You'll notice that I haven't embroidered her extravagantly yet, but I have some trims and thread that I'd like to use. And I'll have to tinker with the bottom gusset, which turned out to be too fat. The Dala horse is a graceful creature, after all.

This little craft detour left me a lot more energized for my work and my kids, so I'm looking forward to a happier end to the week.