Protector/Companion – Min Lee

This Protector/Companion project was one I was very excited for because I already had inspiration in mind from one of my desk toys that my old roommate gave to me a while ago. He gave me this tiny figure of a bird with a dog’s head, and it reminds me so much of him because of how creative he is and how silent-looking he is as a person. This dog-bird figure gave me inspiration and I wanted to create something just like it as my protector and companion during the quarantine.

I figured I could play around with the breed of dog and bird that I would combine for my companion, so I chose a Samoyed dog and a tropical bird with pretty colors. I chose these two in particular because I love how free-spirited and playful Samoyed dogs are, and I also miss being able to enjoy beautiful scenery, which is why I chose the tropical bird with vibrant colors. One of the choices I had to make was how to combine these two animals, and I thought it was a clear choice in the beginning: a dog’s head with a bird’s body, the dog’s two feet, and a dog’s tail. Unfortunately, this idea was a bit too difficult in execution, as the only materials I had to bring these animals to life were cutouts for a puppy, with no cutouts available for a bird.

 

In the end, I decided it’d be better to start on the project and at least try to see where I could take the bird’s attributes and bring them to life on a dog. The way I decided to do this as I was sewing together the dog’s ears, was by incorporating the bird’s colors in a more subtle way. I followed the colors of the dog’s ears, which were pink on the underside, and applied them to one half of the underside of the body, and then applied a light pastel blue to the other half. I then combined them to get a nice pastel purple for the soles of the dog’s feet and tail. By this point I had a full puppy and no other qualities that would distinguish it as a dog-bird. I ran out of white and eggshell-colored felt by the time I finished the head, so I needed to finish up the rest of the white body with muslin. This worked out well, though, because sewing through felt was very rough, especially since I was using a thicker needle and embroidery thread.

To really complete the look, the finishing touches I thought this puppy needed were wings. I improvised the cutouts for the wings and tried to make them resemble bird wings as closely as I could, but by the time I sewed them on, they looked a bit more like butterfly wings. Other improvisations I had to make were the black cutouts for the eyes. The original instructions for making a dog came with materials that included buttons for eyes, but since I didn’t have buttons one me and I thought felt would look cuter anyway, I cut out small black cutouts and used a satin stitch with white embroidery thread to create the whites of the eyes. Then I just used a very small needle to stitch the eyes onto the head. Interestingly enough, I got feedback from my classmates that my finished puppy-bird looked like a fairy dog, and this was completely unintentional, but with the pastel colors and the tiny wings, Otis definitely looks like a mystical creature who’ll be a loyal companion.