Every Single Kitschy Stuffed Chicken

Why do I have so many stuffed chickens in my Pumpkin+Bear etsy shop?

Ask a weird question, and you're going to get a weird answer!

When my Girl Scout troop wanted to participate in a craft fair (spoiler alert: I DO NOT recommend this as a troop fundraiser. The kids had fun, but we cleared the minimum amount that we were hoping to, and it was a LOT OF WORK. Like, A LOT OF WORK. Hold a garage sale instead!), Syd made ornaments, Will made fire starters, and I wanted to make something, too.

I wanted something that I could sew with all of the various fabrics that I have on hand.

I wanted something that I could sew in small batches, as the holiday craft fair season is a VERY busy time of year when you've got a kid dancing in the Nutcracker.

I wanted something that I could sew a lot of, because the girls wanted to make a lot of money!

I wanted something not too uniquely to my taste, because, as I learned selling at craft fairs many years ago, the things that make me go "YAAAASSSS!!!!" generally make the average citizen smile nervously and back away while maintaining eye contact in case I make any sudden moves.

While I was thinking about those craft fairs of years past, I remembered the year that the grumpy old ladies set up a table with an umbrella at a craft fair that I'd been selling at for months. They were rude to me, had bad craft fair etiquette in general, and gave me a bad case of sour grapes because people were seriously shoving past my quilts and necklaces and record bowls in order to mob around their little table and buy their...

STUFFED CHICKENS!

Kitschy stuffed chickens sewn from mismatched fabric!

Kitschy stuffed chickens easy to sew in batches!

Kitschy stuffed chickens that, while they're still not exactly to my taste, are now at least in the realm of ironically hanging out in the vicinity of my taste, on account of how many actual, literal chickens I now have and how much I foolishly love them.

Friends, I sewed a lot of chickens. They didn't exactly sell like hotcakes, because apparently rural Indiana is over stuffed chickens and is now super into fence posts or banisters or whatever painted to look like Santa Claus, but that's how it goes with craft fairs--as soon as you make something just kitschy enough to have sold last year, somebody else has figured out something even kitschier to sell this year.

And that's the long answer for why I have so many stuffed chickens in my Pumpkin+Bear etsy shop! The Halloween and Christmas stuffies are already gone, but here are some other fine, feathered, favorites:

This chicken has polka dots. 

You can't buy this chicken, because I'm keeping her for myself. I have officially jumped the shark in my own home, but damn it if she doesn't, indeed, make me smile!

This chicken is made of a vintage blue flowered sheet. It's the absolute last bit of the same vintage sheets that I once sewed my girls and I matching outfits from, because I used to be that cool. 

This chicken is made of mottled grey quilting cotton. 

This chicken is upcycled from brown courderoy that used to be a skirt. The rest of that brown courderoy is part of the couch slipcovers that I'm sewing. 

This is my fancy Independence Day chicken. 

This is my fancy Valentine's Day chicken. 

This chicken is sewn from a beautiful batik print leftover from the fabric that I used to sew my bedroom curtains back in our previous house. I wish it was still being made so that I could sew even more curtains from it for our current house!

This chicken is actually a giant tapestry that hangs in my bedroom right now. This is part of the margins that I trimmed away before I mounted it.

This is my other fancy Independence Day chicken!

This is my other fancy Valentine's Day chicken!

 And here are all the chickens looking at you and judging you for what's in your heart:

Hey. If you've got a secret tip for what might be THE hot kitschy craft of the 2019 holiday season, whisper it into my ear--I'd love to finally be in the know for once!