Avery Zou – Final Project Documentation

Intention

My initial idea for the final project was to create something that can raise people’s awareness of endangered species. My very first plan was to make a sphere representing the earth and depict the endangered animals on its surface. Considering the difficulties of making a sphere and adding features on the surface, I change the plan to making stuffed animals and creating their death scenes to illustrate the harm people have done to them. I decided to create three animals and their death scenes: a penguin, a polar bear and a dolphin. I chose these three animals because I think they can represent different perspectives of human influence on the environment; all three of them live in/around the ocean, so it also creates some consistency.

 

Process

The penguin is the first one I made of the three. The first step was to cut the felt pieces of different shapes, and then stitch specific pieces together. Since the animal is 3 dimensional, some areas would be curved and not straight. After stitching, I stuffed the penguin with polyester. The polar bear and the dolphin were made using similar method. To create the final scenery, I used some more polyester as the iceberg the penguin stands, cut pieces of red fabric as the blood of the polar bear and stitched small pieces of plastic to the dolphin to demonstrate their endangered situations.

 

Learning

I learned a lot about the details of making little 3-dimensional figures, which is very different from doing 2d projects, since I have to consider how it may look after stuffing. I also got the chance to do lots of hand sewing practice and learn about its techniques.