• creative peopleMeet Abby Glassenberg,award winning soft toy maker & authorPhoto: Brad Bartholomew,copyright 2010 InterweavePress LLC88 spotlight.com.au
creative people •Right: Abby & her new bookthat shows others how tocreate her winged friends.Over 100 birds of every variety havecome to artistic life at the handsof soft toy and sculpture maker,Abigail Patner Glassenberg. Based inMassachusetts, USA, Abby has beenmaking her creatures and creationssince 2005, selling them in galleries,boutiques, craft shows and online.Her work has also been featured inmagazines, sewing, craft, and softsculpture books. Now she is the proudauthor of The Artful Bird: FeatheredFriends to Make and Sew…GCQ: Tell us how your book came about.Abby: I have been sewing soft sculpturein my home studio in Wellesley,Massachusetts, for five years nowand writing about my creations onmy blog, www.whileshenaps.typepad.com. Three years ago I had a showat our local library and made over 50soft toys, including a few birds. Thebirds got lots of positive attention andI became interested in trying to makemore, of different varieties. I spent thenext two years exploring this idea.My blog has really been vital tomy creative process. Participating inthe online craft community inspiredme to push myself to design and sewevery day. As a result, I made a wholemenagerie of birds over the years –everything from penguins to cranes tolittle larks. I got wonderful feedbackabout my birds and many emails withquestions about how they were made.With original patterns for more thana dozen bird varieties I realised thata book showing step-by-step how thebirds are sewn, how I get them tostand on wire legs, and how to createand embellish their wings would befantastic. I wrote a proposal and sentit off and was so pleased to work withInterweave to make this dream a reality!The book is available in bookstoresin Australia and New Zealand fromFebruary onwards.Where did you develop your interest insewing and soft sculpture? Have youstudied along the way?I have always been a maker. Evenfrom an early age I loved origami, clay,drawing, painting, and collage. And Ialways loved to create things I saw innature. I took art classes in schooland, as a teenager, studied art afterschool with a local teacher. I went toJohns Hopkins University in Baltimorefor college where I was a history major.Hopkins did not have an art program atthat time but I took the few classes theydid offer and won the senior art awardwhen I graduated. I went on to becomea teacher and get a Master’s Degreefrom Harvard in education, but I wasalways crafting in my spare time. Whenour first daughter, Roxanne, was bornin 2004 I became a stay-at-home Mumand found that I finally had the time andcreative energy to really pursue anddevelop my artistic interests. I turnedto the sewing machine that I’d boughtwhen I was 13 and had toted aroundwith me to every apartment and houseI’d lived in ever since and decided toreally learn to use it. When Roxanneand I would visit the public library forstory time, I would dash upstairs tothe craft section and check out asmany soft toy sewing books as I couldcarry. Most of these books dated fromthe 1960s and 1970s and were full ofwonderfully quirky patterns. I read allthe how-to sections and sewed throughdozens of patterns and then I startedmy blog to document what I was workingon and share it with others. Through allthis experimentation I began to learnhow to sew and how to design patternsfor three-dimensional plush toys.When I became brave and confidentenough, I began to design my ownoriginal sewing patterns. Creatingsomething completely new andseeing my vision become a real,three-dimensional object in fabric wasaddictive. Soon I started an Etsy shopto sell my work (www.whileshenaps.etsy.com), did some local craft fairs and builtup an overflowing fabric stash. I was onmy way!What’s the unique appeal of birdsto stitchers?In nature there are thousands ofvarieties of birds, each adapted to itsown particular environment. This arrayprovides a seemingly endless set ofchoices for wing and beak shapes,Get Creative Quarterly Autumn 2011 89
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