Week 10 - Oceania

This week New South Wales has been deluged, rivers have flooded and submerged towns all over the state. 

Sydney’s main water supply, Warragamba Dam, has filled for the first time in 14 years and last week water was released from it into the Hawkesbury and Nepean River systems which overflowed in numerous places flooding a lot of the outlying suburbs.

In Sydney itself, streets flooded where they have never done before shocking Sydneysiders who have never experienced the inundations that we normally associate with country towns and rivers.

(this was taken at Marrickville, an inner Sydney suburb - flood photos nicked borrowed from Sydney Morning Herald newspaper - I'll give them back when you've finished looking)

And in the middle of all this, I booked a harbour cruise! We had been given the cruise as a present and time was running out to claim it.  I fully expected to be sitting in the rain but the day turned out glorious, one of the rare sunny days we’ve had for weeks.

 

Surrounded by a week of both good and bad water I started to make a flying dragon.

 

He sat on my sewing table and we discussed what sort of wings he should have.

 

“Phtttt to wings!”  he exclaimed.  “I need a pair of flippers” as he spied an old doll support and started to climb to higher ground.

 

So Oceania the water dragon was born. 

 

Another rare sunny day today and the family have all gone fishing. I asked Oceania if he would like to join them but he said he prefers to stay away from hooks and lines and is now basking beside the pool.

 

 

 

 

Making Oceania

This is my original pattern for a flying dragon named M’yth.

I needed a way to attach Oceania to the wooden dowel of the doll stand, by chance the plastic inner tube of a cotton reel fitted snugly over the dowel, so Oceania had a small operation to insert the plastic tube. I’ve done this before to the feet of dolls but never to an unmentionable place on a dragon……ouch….

 

The fins were free machined scraps of fabric in between two pieces of tulle.  I added ‘rat tails’ to the edges of the fins by zig zagging past the fabric until I had a long tail, then hooking a toothpick under the cotton to give me support to feed, zig zagged back over it. 

Short video here because that is very hard to explain in words.