Summer Festival Applebloom is here!

Hello Dears,

I've had an eventful few weeks. I got another chapter of my Warcraft Fanfic, "Straydog Saga" out the door and I had an unfortunate accident in Georgetown on Friday. I wore brand new, awesomely cute shoes which resulted in a horrific misstep on some uneven flooring.

One sprained right ankle and broken left, big toe later, I've had one bummer of a weekend. There is a wonderful bright side, however, as this event has taught me not only to appreciate the ability to walk and care for myself, it also showed me just how kind and caring my friends really are.

I was going to post a collage dedication to a group of very close friends, and recent events only reinforced the image. I'll make that a separate entry but for now, I'm glad to introduce the fruits of my bed/couch-ridden weekend!

That's right! Part one of my two-part order to Japan is done! Everyone say hello to "夏祭りの林檎咲く" or as we Americans know her: that little filly with the Cutiemark obsession, Applebloom!

Applebloom with gifts from Japan! There's cider in that sake cup, I swear!

When I first showed my family in Japan the episode "Bridal Gossip" from  My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, my host sister and mother loved Applejack and Applebloom. They were even more excited to learn that they were sisters!

 They had been seeing my other pony plushies and were wondering where they were from. When my host sister told me that she in fact liked the show, I offered to make her and her mother a pair of small plushies of their very own.

 I made the Yukata and obi as an extra surprise, and depending on what mama-san would like, I may put Applejack in something similar (but not as fancy) If I could only find apple-themed fabric! I looked for hours and couldn't find any fabric with an apple or country theme. I did however find a very Japanese-like fabric with hotaru (dragonflies) on it!

 I made one big pattern change in this plushie that I think I'll keep for future plushies. There is one less seem line in the neck, as it didn't appear to add any 3D style to the plushies' heads. The ribbon was another new frontier but I think it came out rather well, though not technically adherent to the character design.

And as always, Lucky-ojiichan (Grandpa Lucky) had to make an appearance with Applebloom for cuteness and scale sake. This is soooo being posted on someone's facebook wall!

So next steps will be to start on Applejack. Since Applebloom was a mother-daughter project I'll wait until the next time I visit my mother to start. It bares mentioning that Applebloom's ears and legs were sewn by my mother, who after a little coaching, did an awesome job!

That's all for now dears. If you have the ability to walk, walk around the block a few times for me!

- Ori