Faced with an assignment to make a plush night light, I thought, “Why light?” and brainstormed reasons for a stuffed toy to light up. In a glowworm toy, for instance, the light mimics nature. I’d been reading Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and this got me thinking about the chain of refrigeration, labor, and irradiation involved in American beef production. So I thought, glowing irradiated meat! I know that irradiated meat doesn’t glow, and neither does toxic waste unless it’s in a cartoon, but plush toys typically represent cartoon characters anyway, so it made sense: Plush Irradiated Sirloin.
Projects from Make: Magazine
Plush Irradiated Sirloin
Microcontroller night light illuminates meaty issues.
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Steps
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Step #1: Prepare the fabric.
- I silk-screened my steak illustration onto pink flannel and sewed the pieces together (inside out, so the seams wouldn’t show), leaving a small opening at the base of each one. (For an excellent primer on silk-screening, check out CRAFT magazine, Volume 01, page 106.) You can also use pre-patterned fabric or use fabric paint to hand-paint the design. Next, I turned them right side out, but left them empty. I had to put the lights inside before I stuffed the plush fiberfill around them!
- Grab the silkscreen template: https://makezine.com/11/diyhome_steak/
Conclusion
This project first appeared in MAKE Volume 11.