Here is a re-post of my Just Monkeying Around post about "Cheeko" the monkey. I finally got around to finishing Cheeko, this past spring. His owner picked him up over the summer and was delighted with how he turned out....
Read on.....from the original post in 2013...
The friend that brought me Baby Dear to fix, also brought her monkey to restore. She had told me about him in emails, and I really don't know what I was expecting, but certainly it was not quite what I got.
I guess I thought it would be an old sock monkey to something... Nada -
I must admit, I am a little bit out of my element here!
But I said I would fix him so...I sat him on my work table and looked at him every now and again, but it took me awhile to get up the nerve to touch him.
The problem with this monkey was not really the condition he was in, but the fact that he looked nothing like the monkey my friend remembered from her childhood. She described him as having a blue and white striped shirt, bright yellow overalls with big red buttons - and that's the way she wanted him to look again.
He was in pretty good shape, aside from a dirty face, there were no rips or tears in his body, so I wasn't sure what I should do. She said he felt too solid, she also wanted him softer, so I decided in order to soften him up I would open a part of his side seam up and take out some of his stuffing... then maybe I'd just make him a blue and white striped shirt and a pair of yellow overalls with big red buttons - not so hard??
After a pretty stressful day at work, one evening last week I decided to take the plunge. With seam ripper in hand I started to open him up...
And there the trouble began:
Are you seeing what I am seeing? All of a sudden I knew this project was going to become more than I was expecting!
Each
section of the new fur that was used to cover the obviously older body
was put on individually, so very carefully I started pulling and
snipping the really nice fur away, being careful not to tear any of the
fragile material under the fur. It took quite awhile to get it off. but
once I had it off, I found the original monkey kind of sort of intact
below the new fur..
He
had large open area on the chest of his body and the whole area across
his chest was worn thin, and the top of one arm was completely gone.
At this point I wasn't sure what I was going to do, but I still needed to remove the stuffing, so I continued on.
The
poor guy was pretty crushed by then... but I must admit he was starting
to intrigue me - just a little bit. We then had a little photo shoot
while I tried to think of how I was ever going to restore this cheeky
fellow.
I
put him away, and actually kind of forgot about the little guy until
early last summer his owner contacted me and said they would be in town
in the summer, and could they stop over and pick up the Baby Dear doll,
and Cheeko.
So
I pulled him back out of his box and got busy. Here is the restored
Cheeko. His owner was so happy to see him exactly as she remembered
him, and I was more than pleased with the way he turned out after all my
stressing over this project.
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