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.