I am going completely bonkers, though, because Mr Bun has been playing with the cat pant for WEEKS now, and I still can’t get a good picture of him in action. One day soon!

Or should I say, “the ground.”

The final piece will have fleece on the inside and wool on the outside, be circular, and will have quilting on the bottom side, but I wanted to piece it together and figure out how I would finish all the seams before I actually cut into the fabric (which is pretty nice). Before I sewed this, I sketched it on paper and then pieced one together with tape and napkins, and those exercises were very helpful. This little fabric piece came together in about 5 minutes and disproved a concern I had about how I should pattern it, so it was both very satisfying and genuinely helpful.

Mr Bun stuck his head into it but declined to be photographed.

Behold its sloppy seams and uneven edges! Also, because the material is thin and unlined with tissue paper, the top falls off. Nevertheless, a successful first outing. It’s always good to remind yourself how much easier doing a good job looks once you just plain finish a not-so-great one.

Tonight I decided to go a little further, starting with a detailed sketch of a proposed toy, including all the pattern pieces, where the stitching goes, where the detailing goes, and notes about all the materials. For this example I chose a sushi. It’s a simple shape but not obvious if you want to use a sewing machine for close to all the major seams.

I initially worked out piecing this together in my head on a bike ride, during which I realized that the way I wanted to assemble it (with a pretty good chunk of embroidery for detailing the top of the sushi roll) would involve LOTS of hand-sewn thread, which is not a great thing for a cat toy – too easy to loosen and possibly swallow. That made this object a particularly good choice for that standby of the user-interface designer: the paper prototype!

I think I’ll be doing more with paper—just for itself, too.

I mean, I’m sure some people see this every day. It’s just not a common sight over in the little square near my office.

Anyway, here is the “peritoneum” – it’s for a seed-filled toy, and this is the inner bag that holds the seeds. It’s only clipped shut for now, because I need to pick up some more seeds before I sew it shut.

No, I wasn’t trying to say anything about blood supply in the kidneys – I was just using leftover pieces of embroidery floss, and I didn’t have enough to do all the appliques in a single color.

I briefly thought about putting a spine and part of the ribcage on the back, and then I remember this little thing will be boneless.

Making my daily thing something that isn’t writing might make this harder – I guess I’ll find out in September!

Anyway, here is my first thing: a Flying Spaghetti Monster cat toy. I dithered for a couple of weeks over putting this together, because my first couple of tries really didn’t work at all. This doesn’t match my vision, either, but, hey, the FSM is filled with catnip (little-known fact!), and Mr Bun embraced it with all 4 paws.