Baby Dragons

Ever since I made Saphira last year, I've been toying with the idea of her and Winston becoming parents. Which meant designing some baby dragons. 

​My sister has a collection of adorable baby dragon figurines, which I asked to borrow for inspiration.

So I set about trying to design one in cloth. Personally, I find the whole concept of design and testing very tedious. I just want things to work out right the first time. but nowadays that doesn't happen much anymore.  

I wanted 'cute' baby dragons, and not fierce-looking ones like their parents, so I started with Winston's head pattern and made some major alterations to it, shortening the muzzle, then scanning it in and shrinking it several sizes. I made a first test head using the fabric I had chosen for one of the babies. I don't usually like to 'waste' the good fabric, but I needed to know exactly how it would stuff. The first head wasn't quite right.  It looked like a lion, so I made some more adjustments to the pattern, and made a second head. It looked right as a base for soft sculpturing.

So the next thing was to design a body. I decided they were all going to have the same body, which could work for either a sitting or standing dragon. The body would be wired from the tip of the nose to the tip of the tail so it would be posable. Which meant I'd need the neck to be almost straight, so the seams wouldn't pop when it was bent into other positions.

The test body reminded me of a velociraptor when it was stuffed, so I figured I was on the right track. After all, dragons and dinosaurs do look a bit alike. But the pattern still needed a bit of tweaking, and then I cut and sewed a body out of the good fabric.  I sewed the wrapped wire into the tip of the head, then stuffed it. I made teeny, tiny ears and back spines.... 

Then after stuffing the body, and needle-sculpting the head, I cut out some paper arms, legs, and wings, just to see how it might look....

Then with it's parents, and some 'dragon' eggs I'd purchased at Michael's...

I started adding Apoxie to build up the head features, then decided I'd better stop and catch up with the other ones, because if I worked on the first one to completion I doubt I'd want to start all over again for the second.....or third.  Better to work on all of them at the same time.

​I had originally planned to make three, but when I went through my fabrics, there were four combinations that spoke to me....so it would be four. So I cut out three more sets of pieces.

Meanwhile I finished the sculpting on baby number one, painted it, and started the beading....

He looked adorable, but I had to stop and catch up with the others. So I sewed and stuffed them, did the basic needle-sculpting, and sewed on their Apoxie horns....

Then it was time to sculpt their little faces. They always remind me of tiny cows at this point.

All sculpted, and ready to paint....

Even though I enjoy doing the beading, there is a LOT of it, so it's going to take me a while to finish all their bodies before I start work on designing their arms, legs, and wings. But now is as good a time as any, since there's nothing else pressing on my To-Do list at the moment.  In fact, with Baron and Naomi's wedding photos finally up to be posted next, I have almost an entire month of free time ahead of me. Perfect for making a bunch of baby dragons!