The “cloud” seemed both simpler and more attractive: I liked the combination of sky blue soft fabric and the industrial-looking nylon inflatable. I didn’t pay much attention to color in my past projects but this one gave me a distinctly calm feeling. I adapted a pattern for a sphere to produce the cloud’s football shape, and pre-cut a hole in one side for the umbilical.

I wanted to keep the “constraints” idea present in the piece, so I added the black and brown strings for aesthetics. I was hoping they’d distract people’s eyes from the actual constraining string (the white one) and they accomplished exactly that, which felt like a success.

I think the piece would benefit from a bigger scale and perhaps more “clouds.” It would be fun to experiment with inflatables that are closer to the size of people and cars (like Nancy Davidson’s bigger work) and see how the string constraints change the way we interact with them. If I had started earlier, these iterations would have been more possible.

Above are the cuts i made from the boot (minus the heel). I denoted connections between cuts with lines and circles. I had heel cuts from tape but ended up improvising them, as shown below.

I used cardboard in the heel and soul of the boot to strengthen the form; it kept collapsing on itself.  The inside of the heel was tricky; I had already sewed the entire rest of the boot so there was limited space to stitch. In the future, I’ll start with the smallest/most complex parts of the piece first to avoid issues like this .

The final product ended up kind of fun; the fluffy fabric gives the cowboy boot a gogo spin, which are worlds that don’t usually collide.

This project was intimidating at first; I was worried my sewing skills would not suffice a well-made final product. It was hard for me to visualize how the 2-D cuts I was making (I cut the Kangaroo pieces) were going to fit together in 3-D. Ema did the sewing for the legs and tail while I finished making the cuts, and after seeing her sew and reverse the pieces, I better understood the process. I surprised myself by sewing the entire body and pouch, as well as attaching the tail and head of the Kangaroo.

My hand-stitching skills improved a lot during this project; there were lots of odd corners and edges that I had to do by hand. Sewing openings so that the thread is not visible from the outside was something I struggled with going into the project and I now feel quite comfortable with. I also became more comfortable visualizing the thing as I sewed, periodically taking it away from the needle to reverse it and see how it was shaping up.

Moving forward, I would try to stitch the tail on before stuffing it, because that connection looks a bit Frankensteinian. I would also like to blend the animals a little more dramatically; the Cat Hat is great but there’s nothing mutated or creepy about the Kangaroo itself.

With my first attempt (below!) I cut individual pieces out and taped them as I went, going for something that felt like symmetry. The result was something like a hazmat mask, with a conical chin. 

For my second attempt I tried a different approach: collage. As shown below, this approach gave me more freedom to make: all of the pieces were made, I just had to put them together.

I avoided symmetry, which made sealing the seams challenging. Most of the sides didn’t match up. I was also more intentional about color on this attempt, sticking with white and blue, with black tape.

I like this piece more than my first, from which I’ve learned that it’s better to plan a visual scheme (colors, general geometry) than to try and match random cuts to a familiar image. I didn’t play much with the motion involved in inflation; neither piece changes drastically. Moving forward that is something I want to experiment more with.