Vintage Mohair Dog Restoration

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My newest project was the restoration of a little vintage mohair dog that I’ve had since I was a little girl. When I was four years old, we moved into an apartment in Denver, Colorado (Go, Broncos!), while our new house was being built. This little dog had been left behind and I immediately fell in love and have managed to hang onto him for over 40 years.  When I found an box of my old stuffed animals a few years back, he accidentally got thrown in the washing machine with the the lot. Oops. Older animals aren’t made the same as the ones now. They were stuffed with straw and many times had sections of felt. Lukie came out amazingly clean, but the felt parts were all but destroyed. I put him in a bag and tried not to think about it.

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Lately, I’ve been doing some reading on vintage stuffed animal repair for an old bear that I purchased at an antique shop about 15 years ago. He’s in pretty bad shape and I’ve been wondering what can be done for him. I was reminded of my little dog and went to Michael’s to see if I could get a match on the color of his felt feet. I found an almost perfect match!

I began by carefully clipping the threads holding the felt pieces to the mohair fabric and removing the bottoms of his feet. Once I had them removed, I placed them into the new felt and cut out similar shapes. Then I started to sew them on with a thick beige thread. The first foot I did was the right one, and it came out okay, but I got better as I went along. The little dog was stuffed with a mixture of cotton and straw, which had come out when he was washed, so I added some poly fill to his bottom feet before sewing them up. When I was done sewing the front paws, I carefully cut him open along the seam in the back to stuff the arms, body, and neck. Then I stitched the seam closed. It’s not the best job, but it’s a start! Once I get more experience I can try again, or I can leave him as-is. Now I’m going to start looking for more oldies that I can give new life.

Here’s Lukie, looking quite happy with his refurbish. Not bad for an old guy!

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Project #1

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This morning I decided on my first project: take one or more pieces of jewelry from the thrift store and make it into something new. I went to Last Chance Thrift Store and spent some time looking through their jewelry cases. I looked at several different pieces before settling on a black wire-spring beaded bracelet and a gold seahorse pin with pink crystals.

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I love seahorses, but this pin was something that I’d never, ever wear. There was a really pretty butterfly in blue, pink, and purple that I could have just clipped on the bracelet, but the point was to actually change a piece, not just put two pieces together, so I went with the seahorse.

I started with a metallic silver coat of enamel. It came out much brighter than I expected and I thought it would look a bit odd like that, so once it dried, I painted over it with black while letting some of the silver show through. I then topped off some areas with glitter, like the back fins and the tip of the nose. I had to scrape some of the paint off the pink crystals because it was too hard to paint around them, so I painted right over the top. Once dry, I put the beaded bracelet on and then clipped the seahorse on top. I think it came out great for a first project.

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