Draft-Dodging Hyena

MAKE’s photo editor, Gregory Hayes, made this fantastic draft-dodging hyena out of a pair of his destroyed work jeans, to keep the draft from creeping in under the door of his friend Lex’s new house. Greg explains:

I made this draft-dodging hyena as a somewhat literal housewarming gift for my friend Lex, a puppet and toy designer.

The project started as a simple draft-blocker made from a pair of my many destroyed work jeans. When I started pulling them apart at the seam, I toyed with a few ideas for ways to save the signature shape of the jeans pattern and settled on a rough rendition of Lex’s favorite animal. At the time I shared her house, and though I had free run of her textiles workshop I was trying to design this in secrecy so would only work on it while she wasn’t around … and couldn’t ask her advice.

I had worked with Lex on some puppet projects but had never patterned a stuffed creature before, so had to learn on the fly. For research and reference, I used a pile of Lex’s puppets and about a hundred Googled photos of spotted hyenas. I wanted to use mainly pieces from one pair of jeans, so to start I used scrap fabric or cheap felt to test shapes and ideas before committing them to denim. I found though that my solid mental image of the final shape had helped make my initial pattern visualizations pretty spot-on, so soon abandoned the test steps.

Besides the main pair of jeans, I used: denim scraps from other dead jeans to complete the legs; a scrap of black fur for the tail; a scrap of leather for the nose; stiff fabric to help the ears remain alert; polybead pellets sewn into six pockets to weight the base; leftover wall insulation for stuffing and, well, insulation.

The toughest part of the project was finishing. I slammed through my favorite parts — designing and assembling the face with ears, shaping the legs, sourcing the materials — then hit a wall when it was about 3/4 done. There was a tricky bit with the seams along the rump that I couldn’t quite visualize, so I set it aside for a day to ponder. That was in February 2011; I didn’t pick it up again until February 2012. During that time my subconscious must have been working on the seam problem, which finished up quickly and handsomely. The only thing I didn’t complete was my original plan to give the hyena brushed-on spots; I forgot all about them until I looked at my notes last night. Whoops.

I chose a roughly-finished look, leaving some seams on the outside and showing ragged edges, for a couple of reasons. I wanted to highlight the jeanish elements of the shapes: the face is the back pocket, one ear is the little fob pocket, the eyes are rivets in their original setting … I think that’s the fun of the thing. And hyenas are shabby things. The fraying edges echo the bristly look of a hyena coat.

Quick sketches of reclining hyena shapes overlaying rough shape of jeans leg.

Adapting the fob pockets to ears. I reinforced and pinched the ear to give it a scoop shape.

I marked the level with the width of the front door, then roughed out the leg shapes in paper.

The face takes shape. I set and reset the features about a dozen times using straight pins, and then attached everything with a combination of hand- and machine-sewing.

I like using existing seams when possible. This far hindleg needed only a little seam-ripping and the insertion of a small denim scrap to turn a flat seam into a rough paw shape.

The near hindleg before attaching, atop the body denim where the foreleg has already been sewn to the outside.

Look for Greg’s tutorial to turn an old pair of jeans into a roll-up tool holder in MAKE Volume 34, on newsstands April 23. Not a subscriber? We can take care of that right now!