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Megan Noble and her crafted critters have invaded the square
Sometime around 2010 Megan Noble saw a cool stuffed doll made of fabric in a magazine and decided to try her hand at it.
“It was a robot, and really basic. And I thought I could do better than that. So I made a pattern out of cardboard, and used old clothes for fabric,” she said. “It looked nothing like the magazine, but once I put buttons on it, I liked it anyway. There’s something about a face on a doll—no matter how wonky it is.”
Today Noble uses all new materials—bamboo fleece that she hand dyes paired with cotton quilting prints—and sells them from Critter Craft, her shop at 98 Public Square North on the Dahlonega Square.
Wonky is a good descriptive for her creations. Think Fungus and Waternoose from Monsters, Inc.
“FrankenCritters” was her first choice to name her creations. “But that name was taken,” Noble said.
Some of her critters are more recognizable than others—strangely colored dinosaurs, giraffes, dogs and other animals with just a touch of the quirky about them.
But all of them are original. No two are alike.
Noble has worked with fabric and sewn since she was young, she said.
“My grandmother sewed, and my Aunt Tommye [Scanlin] worked with fabrics and always encouraged me. My dad was a good artist. And my Uncle Thomas [Scanlin] was an artist too, though his art was more fine art than crafts. I was always around well-crafted people,” Noble said.
Tommye spent time babysitting her niece when she was young.
“She and her brother [Jacob Smith] were always eager to do any kind of crafts or art and I was always eager to do it with them, so they didn’t have an out. They were sort of force-fed,” said Tommye. “And Megan and her grandmother were practically joined at the hip. She was always into her fabrics and sewing things.”
Tommye recalled a time when she returned home from a fabric design class with some colorful work she had done there.
“It was very bright colors and I flung it out on the floor for my sister and mother to see. Megan was a toddler and she just squealed and ran over and stood in the middle of it, stomping her feet up and down and squealing. I can still visualize it,” she said.
Noble graduated with an art degree from the University of North Georgia in 2000. She worked several odd jobs until she married her husband, Steven, in 2013.
Just before her wedding she did something that was “insane,” she said. “I challenged myself to make 100 critters in 100 days. I’m not sure why. I think it was just to see if I could come up with 100 ideas in 100 days. I wasn’t trying to sell them or anything. It would have been presumptuous to think anyone would want to buy one when I was just learning to make them."
“Toward the end I was getting desperate for ideas. I would look on the internet and see it was National Ice Cream Day or something and use that. One of the best ones I did, I think, is from finding out it was Bob Ross’ birthday. It looked kind of like him. It had Afro hair.”
Eventually, Noble did sell all of the original 100, along with many others, going to craft shows and festivals. In 2015 she decided to go on the craft show circuit full time.
“Last year there were no regular craft shows,” she said. So she decided to open a shop.
The lockdown caused by the COVID pandemic may have been what prompted her decision, but it wasn’t a hard decision to make.
“It seems every time there is a craft show, it rains. The last show I did we were sitting on a ladder watching the water rush under us carrying everybody’s business cards down the street. And living out of a suitcase in a motel is not for me. I like my creature comforts,” she said. “Besides, I had always wanted a shop on the square. I just didn’t know what I was going to put in it.”
The shop is doing well for its first year in business.
“The hardest part,” Noble said, “is getting over being a flaky artist type. I have to keep regular hours. It’s a real job.”
Critter Craft is open 11 a.m.-5 p.m., Thursday through Monday at this time.
“That may change during the holidays,” Noble said.
You can follow Critter Craft on Instagram.