Another Dragon

I finally decided to make the second dragon that I've always wanted.  Winston was the first dragon, and he was intended to just be my 'test dragon', but he turned out so well that I never took the time to make another. Over the years, Winston has made many good friends.....  

With all my health issues I just figured I wouldn't be able to tackle another dragon, but after making wings for Miho last year - which were made exactly the same as Winston's wings - I realized that it was definitely still possible. 

While I was working on taking photos for my White Cat story, I found myself thinking of dragons a lot, and thought that, even though Winston was friends with everyone, he could use a friend of his own species.....another dragon.  A girl dragon.

I had always envisioned a dragon as a steed for one of my little House Elf Warriors, and with one in the house, and another on the way, I figured now was as good a time as any. After all, my eyesight wasn't getting any better. I had always thought the second dragon would be bigger and in a different pose, but decided that it would be nice if Winston could have a girlfriend much the same size as himself, and decided to just make alterations to the changes I'd already made the first time.

​So, I put an Elf on Winston's back to check for size, and where I needed to make adjustments to the pattern. I thought they worked quite well together....

 I took out the fabric that I'd bought after I finished Winston - it was a similar salt dye cotton, in turquoise, but leaning towards purple. I got out the patterns and made adjustments to all the places where I thought Winston could have used some improvement;
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- straighten the neck some so it could be posed easier without strain on the stitches in the inner curves
- straighten the bend in the arms so they could be straightened more without popping the inner elbow stitches.
​- put darts in the tail where it first touches the ground, so the dragon will stand upright and not keel forward all the time
​- add a little extra length in the body to accommodate a saddle for the Elf.
​- separate all the fins on the back so each one is its own separate unit

I made the pattern adjustments using blue paper so I'd know exactly what I'd added....

I began cutting out the pieces. There were a lot!  I had found a nice purple stripe fabric for the dragon underbelly, but it was too contrasty on the right side, so I used the lighter wrong side instead.  The sewing began....

Some of the body parts sewn together....

The wings were just sewn along the top edge - leaving an opening at the bend at the top - then turned right side out, pressed, and then the channel for the wire was sewn. I applied a thin layer of glue along the bottom raw edges of the wing fabric to hold the layers smoothly together. After that dried, I sewed the 'wing veins', drew on the rugged edge, and cut it out with scissors....

All the individual fins on the back were stitched, turned, and top-stitched. I left the last three fins in one piece since they were going onto a straight section of the tail. When doing any top-stitching I'd leave long threads that would need to be sewn in invisibly by hand later - as opposed to backstitching at the beginning and ends of every line.