There have been some really big patients in the hospital recently... A giant Curious George who was used in department store window displays once upon a time (and who was getting a bath to welcome a new family member), a large gorilla with seam splitting issues, a Steiff giraffe almost as tall as me who had been kept in a damp basement... but today I wanted to share the dragon, because she is unique! Handmade originally, there are no others like her. But... unfortunately, after years of adventures with her person, and LOTS of hugs, her scales were wearing, she was loosing her magical shine, and she could no longer hold up her tail. Here are some of her diagnosis photos:
Now we didn't want to lose her expression, or any of her look for that matter, so the plan was for her to come to the hospital and get lined, which means she would also get restuffed. Her irridescent areas were already lined (you can see the quilting) and her spine spikes were too small to line, so those were repaired, but everywhere else she got a second layer, so as her fabric wore from future adventures, lining would become visible before stuffing. This also reinforced her velvet.
I actually had a near perfect fabric match for her velour that we used for the lining:
Of course, once she was lined, you could only see the inside of the fabric looking at her inside. Here she is inside out and lined... be warned, some people find the inside out photos a bit disturbing so jump past if you don't want to see a dragon's insides.... I'll leave some space so you have time.
Then she got restuffed, including, of course, a heart with a bit of her original stuffing:
You can see the heart is the same fabric as the lining, which matches her outside velour.
Soon, she was ready to fly home!
It took a very large box, because now that her tail stood out straight, and she was plump again, she needed a big rectangular box that she could occupy two sides of, with lots of padding, so as not to squish spines or wings or fingers.
She flew home to Colorado and her person wrote:
Thank you so much. She is perfect, just arrived!! YAY!! I can’t believe it, she’s really here. <3 I hope so, too; I hope I can give her to a child of my own someday. This is such a special gift you’ve given me, i want you to know how much I truly do appreciate it.
