Please start here - plushies and other crafting goodness.

Friends, Romans, Countryman,

....yeah I know everyone does it but tough!

History

Many months ago I started making plushies. Well actually it was only September (2012), but I guess that is a while ago....errr....

It all started with this magical object - the Doctor Who quiet book made by Bantam BB for her son. A friend saw it and loved it, I know I do, and she really really wanted someone to make her one. I admit, I could make it but it was really far larger a project than I was willing to take on at that time. Admittedly I had done something of similar scope previous to that for my nephew (I will blog about that at some point), but I just wasn't up for it just then.

Then my friend found another pattern which calls itself Human Plush David Tennant/Castiel by Michelle Coffee. The scope of this was far more manageable but I did not realise quite what a journey I had begun. More than 14 plushies later, I am now accepting that although I do this for fun there is time and effort involved and I have to charge you lovely people for them.

Cost

If you would like me to make you one the cost is £15.

This is really barely a nod towards the cost of  my labour (at least 12 hours) and design as I mostly source my materials for free second hand. It also includes postage (UK only, in the unlikely event anyone outside of the UK wants one, I will discuss the postage with you). I will also pass on to you any costs for major materials that I need to buy from new.

What design can I order?

I will consider any character you can think of, but I don't promise to make any character. You are welcome to order one of the characters I have already made, but be aware they will not look identical. I use what fabric I have to hand, which varies, and I adapt the design to what I have the patience to do at the time. For example I have made the 10th Doctor (David Tennant) twice. They do not look exactly the same.

I prefer to make geeky characters, but as you can see I have also made real people (Elvis, Michael Jackson) and characters I do not know at all.

The ones that come out best have very distinctive dress or look as plushies have simplified features, they are not portraits. I have done characters like Sherlock and Edward from Twilight, but because there is not a lot to make the way they dress distinctive they were not as fun as some of the others. If I don't know the character I may ask you to help me find reference photos or pictures.

Here is the list of every character I have made so far:

Firefly

• Mal Reynolds

Star Wars

• Darth Vader 

Doctor Who/Torchwood

• 11th Doctor (Matt Smith - twice)
• Captain Jack Harkness
• 10th Doctor (David Tennant - twice)
• Clara/Oswin Oswald/Dalek

  Comics and superhero films/tv

• Clark Kent/Superman
• Black Widow
• Thor
• Loki
• Morpheus/Dream (also resembles Neil Gaiman, twice)

Harry Potter

• Harry Potter
• Hermione Granger
• Albus Dumbledore
• Severus Snape

Computer Games - Bioshock Infinite

• Elizabeth (Bioshock)

Back to the Future movies

• Doc Emmett Brown 
• Marty McFly
• Clara Clayton / Brown

  Other assorted characters from books and tv and film

• Babydoll (Suckerpunch - twice)
• Sherlock (Cumberbatch edition)
• Edward Cullen (Twilight saga)

Real People

• Elvis (three times in white, navy and black)
• Michael Jackson (Thriller video)

 

Quality control

Please remember you are getting a handmade object. I am doing this for fun and I am by no means an expert. You will be getting something made with humour and love.

It will not, however, be a perfect, factory made toy, and may not be very durable for small children.  Take caution if you want to wash it.

In addition I will try and get character details (mostly) right and if I am not certain about how to make the character best or what fabric to use, I will discuss the options with you.

Good luck and feel free to browse my posts about the plushies I've made.

A G[r]eek alphabet...help needed

Soooo I have a new project - I'm making something for a friend's baby.

It's going to be a nerdy/classical/children's alphabet!

So far the letters I've vaguely worked out

[update with friend's suggestions that I like as of 02/06/2013]

A - Athena, Apples of Hesperides, Great A'tuin
B - Binky ( Pratchett), ?Brunhilde (not sure how to do that yet), Big Bird, Books
C - Callisto (Ursa Major - constellation), Cheshire Cat
D - Daleks, Dwarves
E - Elmer the elephant, Elmo
F - ?Freya (not sure how to do that), Flamingo croquet (Alice), Feegles (Pratchett)
G - Greebo (Pratchett)
H - Heracles, Hogfather (Death as, Pratchett)
I - Icarus, Isis
J - Jam (“The rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday-but never jam today" - White Queen in Alice), ?Jedi (not sure how to do yet)
K - Kraken, K9 (Doctor Who), Knight
L - Light sabers, Loki, luggage (Pratchett), Lego
M - Medusa, Millenium Falcon
N - Narcissus
O - Odysseus, Odin
P - Persephone Pomegranate
Q - Queens (Red, White- Alice)
R - Red Queen (Alice), White Rabbit?
S - Stark, Sonic Screwdriver, Star Trek
T - Tardis, Towel, Theseus
U - Unicorn, Uhura
V - Violin (Sherlock playing one), vampire (cout from Sesame Street)
W - Wizzard (Rincewind's hat, Pratchett), White Rabbit?
X - x wing
Y - Yggdrasil (world tree), Yoda
Z - Zeus

Elizabeth, not a queen but still some fiddly bits

One of my old school friends asked for a character I am not at all familiar with from the computer game Bioshock. Her name is Elizabeth and she was trapped in a library apparently. My friend very kindly sent me some good shots of what Missy Liz looks like in costume to help me work out how to make her.

This image was particularly useful to me as a reference image:

 

I think I should let you know I don't play computer games (I hardly think scramble and words with friends count) and I have only vaguely heard of Bioshock

The first two decisions I had to make were the colour/fabric to use and what to do about the skirt.

The colour was a question because I did not have anything the correct shade of blue, fortunately my friend was quite easy going about what colour I could choose so I chose a fabric that was velvety which I particularly liked for Elizabeth for some reason.

For the skirt I needed to decide if I was going to give her legs or not. I could have just made a skirt which was just a cone of fabric. I didn't like this idea somehow so I decided her legs would be the same colour as the skirt. I also decided I would attach the skirt on after I'd made the main doll.

As always the first stage was the planning sketch.

After that I was on to cutting out fabric.

When I make dolls I am quite lazy in some ways. Having started I am very reluctant to undo something I've sewn or retreat if something goes wrong. I misaligned some of the sleeve fabric and just found work arounds rather than go back and correct. The same happened when I realised you don't really see Elizabeth's ears under her hair. I just added some bits and thought what the heck.

As is often the case before I knew it I was sewing the edges up and working on turning Missy Lizzie back the right way round. I always feel this stage looks a bit like the Gorignak scene in Galaxy Quest when the transporter turns the pig inside out. It looks awful but it's also interesting to see what happens behind the scenes (to me anyway).

So crafters out there, do you get to a certain point before bed and think oh well it's fine I'll just finish up and THEN go to bed. So do you do that and either it takes far longer than you anticipated or something goes wrong and you have the option of completely going without sleep or going to sleep anxious about how to fix your problem? No? Just me then, OK, haha :D

Anyway so I got to the turning inside out stage and I couldn't get Elizabeth's left arm and hand to turn the right way out. I tried and tried and finally had to undo the stitching on the cuff and hand and chuck the whole bit away. It was a traumatic moment. Also distressing was realising the legs were shorter than I wanted.

The upside to refusing to go back is you get inventive. I decided that I could manage to sew a new hand back on by making it separately turning it inside out and then stitching it and the cuff onto the right side out sleeve. This was fiddly but less bad than I expected. The legs I decided to extend slightly by making fake leather boots that I sewed onto the legs. It was only a small extra height but I also liked that it gave Elizabeth boots.

Having sewn boots onto Darth Vader, I used what I learnt there and inspiration from a model of Elizabeth that someone had analysed online to use the side effects of sewing boots on to make a deliberate effect.

The first stage was stuffing the legs. I then made the boots go round the leg with the seam at the front with a slight v at the top to use the stitching to pretend to be lace up boots. Sadly I foolishly didn't take a picture of them as I was rather proud of them.

That done I worked out the skirt. I pinned it on in one piece. I had intended to do this with the body unstuffed but I decided I could sew better with the body stuffed so I did that first.

 

I started with the back and cut the v for the corset shape and sewed down the waistline and worked my way round to the side. I then did the same on the front. Finding it hard to get the fabric to lie properly along her side I ended up completely cutting through the fabric that wrapped around one side and then I could make the fabric lie properly on both sides. Then I hemmed the whole skirt.

Towards this point I posted a picture online and a new acquaintance had suggested the ears were too big. While they were the normal size for the standard pattern, I was starting to feel that I didn't quite like how they were coming out. While I wasn't willing to go as far as my friend suggested I did do some tucking and this did improve her appearance.

All in all I think it came out rather nice.

The final thing I did was add on her tiny silver thimble on her hand by embroidering with metal silver thread. I understand she lost a finger and wears the thimble over it.

Epilogue

Elizabeth was posted off to her new owner as normal. A little while later I received a rather lovely missive from Miss Elizabeth, which I reproduce below.

The end, the beginning

So before bed, I just want to say, have really really enjoyed making all 14 of the plushies that I've made, I do not regret a single one.

However, from now on, unless I agree specifically with you that I will make it for you for free, I will be charging you £15 if you would like me to make it for you. If I have to buy all materials from scratch I will inform you if I feel this deserves an extra cost.

It is not even close to the cost of my labour as, even without measuring, I can't imagine it takes less than 5 hours, even if materials are not a big cost (I mostly reuse scraps from others). However, this charge will include postage (generally about £3).

I will consider any character but I don't promise to make any character. I also don't promise to make it perfect, but I will try and get character details (mostly) right. They are handmade items made to the best of my limited skill.






This is not a business, I am still doing this for fun and geeky enjoyment.

Thanks :D

Darth is done!

So a friend asked for Darth Vader as a plushie as a present for her partner. While Darth Vader is pretty cool and quite striking, in a lot of ways he could be very unexciting as there is a limited amount of detail and a lot of black.

I decided I would have some fun by making the helmet removable so I could have the scarred face underneath and that I would try to use some fake leather since I had been kindly donated some. Fake leather on such a small scale was not going to be easy to sew inside out so I had to find other ways round using it.

Fortunately for the body, I had some left over black cotton and I decided that the better part of valour lay with making the helmet out of black felt to make up for the fake leather trauma that was bound to ensue.

I had a bunch of different thoughts running through my head trying to pull me in different directions so I tried to make myself work in a linear fashion.

After cutting everything (ish) out, I started by embroidering the control panel, and then put the basic body and cape together with the head. The cape was tedious as it needed to be sewn on before Darth was sewn inside out and got in the way of doing that. At least it didn't need hemming. Thank YOU fake leather. It also thankfully was black inside so I didn't need to line it either. The basic body went relatively swiftly really all in all.

I did dither a bit about what colour to make Darth's panda eyes but I'm quite happy with my choice in retrospect. Since Darth's helmet sort of fixes to a collar I decided to use black felt around the neck to bridge between body and the head.

  

For the scar on the top of the head I decided actually sewing it after the head was sewn up would create a realistic scar ridge and I quite like how it came out.

With that done I decided to concentrate on the helmet. As always trying to match it up to the real details makes you realise both what will make it distinctive and what details you don't register consciously.

I was incredibly grateful it was made of felt however as it made it a lot more straightforward to put together. I used overlapping parts to get some of the details and embroidery for the eye holes and the grill for the mouth.

Then I started work on the boots and gloves which I foolishly decided to do in fake leather. Because of this I had to sort of sew them round the stuffed body. The gloves came out smaller than I'd like but the boots came out alright, if a bit messy round the back (just don't look).

So there he is, complete. I like how the helmet came out although it isn't quite how I would have liked it. All in all rather more fun than I expected for a black on black plushie.

Darth decisions

So Darth Vader. It's gonna be a bit simple if I just do it plain so he's going to have a removable helmet.

This means I need to decide how to do his face. These shots are the angle I'm thinking about





So there are several aspects I am thinking about. The first is the base for the face. Normally my base material is a pale pinky caucasian colour and obviously Darth is caucasian ish, but he's also kind of not seen the sunlight and ill pale. I'm not sure whether I should go for a basic white. I don't really have anything between pale pinky and white. I had thought about a greeny colour but he's not really green. My current pale pink is not all that strong a colour so it might do.

The other aspect I want to work out is the very panda shadowyness round the eyes. NormallyI'd want to do that with embroidery. I am tempted also to do it with a thin layer of black gauzy fabric but I think this may come out looking odd. I think I will stick to embroidery.

This is also the plan for the scar on the head - probably also embroidery.

Finally I need a reference image for the control panel :

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

So this one will have to do, alongside this one

Billie Jean is not my lover....

This is the second time I've had a song stuck in my head while making a plushie.... also ....Thrilllerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Anyhoo. This one was not all that bad to make.

I used a model as a template because it was hard to get any details out of real images of MJ in the Thriller video on google. I'm afraid I was too lazy to do my own screen grabs.

I did have some debate about which red fabric to use but I chose a slightly shiny fabric. With some convenient black cotton knocking around and some newly bought light brown felt it was really pretty easy work.

Really the pattern became extremely easy to adapt. Basically a plain red body with some added black stripes. Hands extended so that the sleeves are more rolled up, and a bit of embroidery for the curls on his face.

What made it especially easy was that all the fabrics were thin and light. Also the lack of jacket was a big help. I did consider making one but to be honest a red jacket over a red basic tshirt with red trousers seemed pointless so I didn't.


Touchingly the recipient immediately messaged me the moment it went up on facebook and walked round to collect! Bless. That's appreciation. I charged 1 cadbury's creme egg.