Cute little ghosts and lights - Page 9 & 10

Page 9 was mostly about small fiddly repetition. I foolishly continued my trend of avoiding felt (partly I'm not sure I had enough, and partly I just I dunno I didn't wanna) but turning inside out 9 tiny adipose was hard work. 

The ribbon was fairly quick to sew into the number shapes although pinning them into shape was a pain as they are so small. It was also fun to use up little bits and create a colour sequence. I actually think they look more like little ghosts or like the stay puffed marshmallow man out of GhostBusters as well as adipose and I quite like that they have character and therefore aren't identical.

So that was so quick I thought I'd add in Page 10! 

Ood are a fan favourite character and I knew I really wanted to make the communication globe light up as it does in the tv series. I experimented with those keyring lights before I found that an LED light for a bike (small one) would work perfectly inside.

When the light shines you do see some of the yellow plastic I didn't quite manage to cut away but I love how it looks all the same. It was fun making the ood as the fabric for the head was already naturally wrinkly and the ribbons made short work of the tentacles. A quick and easy page to put together

Shiny shiny robots - Page 8

When I reached the Cyberman I had hitch in that I didn't have a grey or shiny fabric that I wanted to use, I don't have a lot of grey generally anyway really. I had had a scrap of some shiny silver stretch that I'd used a while back for a helmet for Thor but  that was all gone and there wasn't a grey I was happy with available in my stash. So I sent out a call and I was really lucky - the friend who gave me that last lot of shiny silver had some more she could give me to use. I also got some other bits of grey from other friends. Which is always useful to have alternatives. 

The design called for movable arms and legs so I made these double sided covered over cardboard for stiffness. I didn't have any grommets or anything like that so I just used a bit of stitching at a very limited point, a bit like a button to give the limbs some flexibility. 

The fabric was stretchy which was harder to deal with but really the worst thing was the metallic thread.

There are I'm sure metallic threads out there that don't give you the urge to scream at some point, but in my experience the only ones I've had are fabric threads wrapped in a metallic substance. 

After a while pulling it through a material the outer less flexible metal will shift differently (or not shift) leaving you with a bare thread. 

He came out rather nice I think if I do say so myself, kind of cute, and again with the long running theme of the designer, clearly downplaying the scary with the "Posing" aspect.

Clean teeth aren't scary - Page 6 and 7

So the reducing the scariness of the monsters continues here.

Weeping angels are one of the most unnerving of all Doctor Who villians and they are defanged by being all about brushing their teeth.

The grey fabric I used was quite thick and heavy, almost like denim and was a pain to work with, specially making the hands as pockets for the toothbrush and toothpaste.


There's not much to say here other than that, so I thought I'd add in page 7.

I don't have a complete photo of Page 7 - you can see here that it doesn't have the words "Get the Tardis to earth.


The key choice I made on this page, was to try and find out a bit about the colours of the planets and use that to make decisions.

I think I've got colours for Mercury, Neptune and maybe Mars, Jupiter and Saturn here.

Both of these were non complicated pages to do. This tardis being both tiny and double sided was a bit fiddly though.

Dress up dolly - Page 4 & 5

Pages 4 and 5 are a pair. I mentioned this in a video guide but it's very obvious that as Spacebat Designs created this design, she was consciously trying to tone down the fear factor of the scarier characters for a child audience. Here we have Daleks who are pretty scary and they are set up to be dressed up. I also loved this page because the person it was for has a dalek with a feather boa in her house.

 

With any page I think through my fabric choices for different parts to make sure they all go colour-wise, but often I then have to work through the challenges of working with those fabrics as I go along, I only have so much forethought.

So in this case, I'd chosen to continue using cloth for the dalek itself, but I got as far as the balls that decorate the "skirt" and I realised there was no way I had the patience to cut out all the tiny circles of fabric and tuck the edges under to avoid fraying.

I was stuck for a while but then I remembered a broken necklace with beads the right colour and size and it was such a relief not to have a frustrating chore for that detail.

Also I can't bring my British self to use a z in accessorise. It just isn't happening!

As I mentioned the accessories had to have the feather boa, so I adapted the pattern of the scarf to make a nice shape for the boa.

Foolishly I decided to embroider the scarf thinking it was too small to take long and it really took a lot longer than I expected, specially when I was looking into colours and found the official pattern of colours from the original scarf.

The other ones I decided to make it easy on myself, so I used actual beads for the pearl necklace and felt for the other hats and the bow tie was made from ribbon.

The last detail was outlines so you could see where to stash the the different accessories when not in use.

Open the door - let them in - Page 3

This blog is so delayed. Anyway, Page 3 is the Tardis.
One of the things I should mention is the background fabric. Not being blessed with endless yardage of the same background colours I attempted as best I could to mix up the different background fabrics and to not bunch it up too much. I also wanted to make sure I had enough of darker night time-y colours for pages where they should be night time-y.
This one has a shiny black fabric (satin?), contrasting the dark blue velvet of the doll pocket and the front page.

Making the Tardis out of cloth gave me room to do things like make the backs of the doors white - a detail I had never noticed before - also to have slightly transparenty windows. I think there's a little cardboard in the doors to help stiffen them slightly.

The largest alteration I made to the original pattern is that the original pattern does not specify what is behind the doors. I chose this console which I think is 11's (Matt Smith). I don't think I had a reason, I just felt like it. I did toy with doing some kind of swirl of light like when Rose opens the Tardis to save people but I rather like how the console has come out.

A detail that despite it being in the instructions that I messed up is the sign - Police Box. You can see from the two pictures that originally I got it wrong and put black writing on white - a version I did find pics of but nothing definitive, and when I realised mostly it's white writing on black I had to go back and change it.

Friends and past selves...page 2 or inner cover

One of the optional parts of the book was the doll pocket and the dolls themselves. I think I did these quite late in the day and I kind of caved because I'd made lots of plushies before as you can see on this blog.

There was another pattern I could have bought for them, but I decided to free style.

This was not exactly wise as you may be able to see from the pair of them together. The newest doctor is fatter and larger than the fifth Doctor, because I'd had such a terrible time turning him right side out that I increased the pattern.

For those of you who don't know how I do that, I made a pattern and design, and then put together each site of the doll.

I then sew it together right side to right side, then turn inside out and stuff.

If you make the arms too thin, you spend a very slow time trying to get them the right way out, panicking that you will push too hard and make a hole in the fabric.

This is particularly bad if there is a thickened area, like where the hands meet the sleeves.
I survived, if with slightly wonky arms, and narrowly escaped forgetting his lovely celery stick thanks to an observant friend who saw my posted photos.

I haven't got a separate image of the pocket space the dolls are sitting in, but it was a rescue of a piece of fabric I accidentally melted, because me, and I rather like it. It reminds me of the rip in dimensions in one of the 11th Doctor episodes.

Obviously it was a lot easier to make 13 as she was a larger pattern all round.

I don't always make any of the clothes separately and removable, but often longer coats or jackets do get made separately, and I think in this case the lining goes all the way up the back piece, if not into the arms.

Some details in either doll do simply have to be left out because I can't make things that small but I loved adding in the earring and braces.

The Doctor is very very late

So in about 2012, a friend was going on about the Doctor Who Quiet Book. Well we all were, it was really cool. I was reading The Mary Sue A LOT back then and they had an article all about it (Doctor Who Quiet Book Mary Sue article). She wished someone would make it. I wasn't really into sewing much back then but I said I would do something smaller and she found a Doctor Who Plushie. This lead to a lot of  other plushies, which really opened the gateway to a lot of much large projects which you can find on this blog.

Fast foward to now, I've made a lot of large projects, my friend has a new baby and I'm like "I could totally make that book she wanted. It would be easy!". To my delight the pattern was still listed on Etsy, although the woman had changed her online name from Bantam BB to SpaceBat Designs (pattern for Doctor Who Quiet book on Etsy). And I mean it was 9 quid, why wouldn't I?

As I write, I've finished all 12 pages, and overall, it's been very quick really despite the fact that I only finished the previous project in June and I'd not even used much felt. I think what sped things up was that I'm only lightly tinkering with the pattern, and the patterns are larger than some of my previous projects. With my own projects I have to make a lot more decisions than just what fabric or materials am I using. It's been a lot of fun.

The Cover

So on to the cover page. The first choice I made was I was going to embroider on the title of the book rather than cut out felt letters or other fabric. I also decided that I would use the font and colour scheme of the newest Doctor. To do this, I found a picture online and traced it onto the interfacing, then retraced it backwards. I'd planned out my backing fabrics and the cover was set to be blue velvet. I got a bit overexcited and melted it a bit on the edges. I'm not very good at remembering past mistakes as this was not my first time slightly melting this fabric.
The embroidery for the lettering I used was the graded colour kind between a pale yellow and an orangey colour. I ran out with a tiny bit to go, but managed to colour match. Essentially it was fairly easy.

The tiny tardis was a bit harder without some actual blue felt, I was using a navy cotton I had lots of, but being small, it didn't take long.

To finish off the design and make it look more like space, I foolishly decided to try and use up some more of this awful embroidery thread that has gold coloured metal wrapped around it, which is hell on earth to sew with, but all in all for a few stars it was fine!

Doctor no 11....yes again

So glancing back at my previous posts forever ago I'm sure you're thinking where's my darn delorean, where's my nursery rhyme book for the niece?

And the answer would be I don't know I got distracted. Instead I've been asked for the straightforward kind of plushies and I've finally made one of them - the 11th Doctor. This is not my first outing with the 11th Doctor. The last time I made one for a friend's daughter.

I have just realised I left something out of my plushie this time - the braces! Ooops. Never mind can add those on top. Done it before.

Anyway, on my second outing I was thinking about what fabric I had to hand in the more or less right colours.

I don't use a lot of felt really in my plushies despite the fact that it doesn't fray and is therefore easy to use. I guess because I don't have a lot generally and I have a looooooooot of other bits of cloth. I was slightly excited this time to get a chance to use a fat square I'd bought ages ago on holiday that was faintly reminiscent of tweed but cotton for the jacket.

I confess I did some cursory colour research but then I just got stuck in. I had to slightly make use of some scraps creatively to create the hair as I didn't have enough of the fabric I wanted.

I probably should have taken more care of the lining up of the pattern of the fabric of the jacket but I like the way it looks.

The requestor had asked for a fez, which I hadn't done the last time.

The last stage involved me realising I'd mised out the braces, I sadly didn't photograph them but they were the same material as the bow tie which was a fun touch.

So there we are, he's done. I like some aspects of this one better than the previous version. Admittedly the previous plushie was much earlier into my odyssey into plushie making. I currently appear to have made well over 20 of the darn things!

I've got to the stage now where I quite like that things aren't perfect, that the legs and other parts aren't even and the fabrics vary so much. I like the challenges that each one brings, even when I make the same plushie again.

I've got a toughie coming up - someone asked me for Imperator Furiosa and I'm thinking about how I can make that arm. Sadly I don't have any more grey pipe cleaners. But maybe I can cover some ones I have of another colour.

One two, skip a few....

So my latest blogpost is about the second project after the Babydoll plushie but I don't have have the photos on hand for the one in between, so I'm writing about it anyway out of sequence, messing with my librarian orderly brain. I know. It hurts.

So the sequence of making was :

• Babydoll (Suckerpunch)
• Hermione Granger
• Oswin Oswald/Dalek

Who is Clara? Why is Clara?

A while back my friend said that her daughter would like a Clara to go with her 11th Doctor as her Christmas present. I said OK and thought very little of it as Christmas was a while away,  and I got on with some other projects and life and stuff. Then recently I was buying presents and I said "What does your daughter want for Christmas." and she said, you agreed to make Clara  but it's OK if you can't now. And I was like "no, no, I'll do it."

The problem I have is that while Clara/Oswin/whatever dresses very nicely I'm sure, it's not exactly iconic or anything. Her Clara the governess is quite iconic I suppose but I'd just made Clara Clayton/Brown who is also in a sort of Victorian outfit and I didn't want to have a feeling of deja vu.

I know Clara is less brightly coloured but still once translated into plushie there wouldn't be a ton of difference.

So I had this inspiration - I would do Clara, well not really Clara, Oswin Oswald who is actually a dalek and I would make a dalek that is hollow for her to go in because she's a dalek - see?

It'll be fine I've got plenty of time I told myself and then started slightly frantically sewing.

Making Oswin

I've got to admit that Oswin's outfit wasn't that exciting and I was much more interested in the hollow dalek. As I was working from my own ideas and not a proper pattern, I wanted to finish Oswin as fast as possible in order to know the dimensions of the space I needed to incorporate into the dalek's body. My plushies are all more or less the same size but it's not an exact science and things do vary. Plus I have not kept any of them so I didn't have one to hand to measure with.

Oswin's outfit also had the convenience of my accidental excess purchase of red felt (I've now got miles of the stuff from my perspective). So with only a cursory glance at pictures of Oswin, I set to work.


Having struggled with longer brown hair with Hermione and given up and put on wool I knew I'd be doing the same this time.

I then started sewing on the wool hair. In my head I though Oswin had a fringe or that Clara did but I hadn't thought too hard about it. As a result I thought I'd done her hair and it looked like this

Doing some research afterwards she has had sort of a long fringe that rarely sits on her forehead.

but the key point is, not as Oswin if you look at the earlier reference image.
I only registered this fact after I'd done the hair. Although I do take mistakes in my stride and of course make choices in my plushies for some reason I just didn't like that I'd got this wrong, so I added further wool to fix her fringe.

Although this gave Clara rather ridiculously large hair it mainly made me feel better.

Oswin the Dalek

With Oswin made, I moved on to the dalek.

Colour scheme

I knew immediately I would not be making the dalek the real colours of Oswin's dalek or even the most common colour that I remember seeing - the sort of goldy colour with black etc.



I didn't really have the right materials to hand and I didn't have time and also I don't know I just didn't feel like it. I had, however a fair amount of grey felt that I planned to use.

I hunted around for other colour schemes and settled on one with a grey base and black details.

I liked this one, so I based my design on this.

Making the dalek in sections - the main body piece

In making the dalek I confess I kind of made it up as I went along. I wrapped a long piece around the Oswin plushie to get the measurement around her and found the piece I had was a bit short so I added a black bit to the bottom and top which also fit with the design but added height.

I wanted the hollow dalek to sort of stand up on its own even without the Oswin inside, so I was prepared for it to need some stiffening so after sewing on the black roundels I ironed on interfacing.

Base of the dalek

I then had to work out the base and the head. The head needed to be all of one piece as it's visible but I was prepared for a much less tidy base. I didn't have enough fabric to use one whole piece so I sewed some bits together to make the base and sewed it in.



Dome of the dalek head

The dome of the head was a bit of a puzzle but I basically had one large bit of grey left so that was the maximum curve I could make. I wasn't entirely sure how to make a dome but I figured a circle of fabric with slits in should be able to be overlapped to work and then sewn down, so I tested it with a paper template. This paper circle was the largest size of circle my largest piece of grey felt would be able to cut out.

I then used this as a pattern for the dome. There was not really enough fabric left for the base of the dome so I used a navy material I had plenty of as I figured the base would not be very visible and it would be better for it to be dark. I made a pattern for the base the right size for the hole at the top of the tube for the base and constructed the dome to curve to match the base. I then unpinned the base and sewed up the dome.

For the eye stalk I used a black pipe cleaner, I cut a hole in the dome and sewed it in place. The eye at the end came after. I also made the two antennae things by rolling small pieces of yellow-white felt and sewing them in place.

I then turned the dome inside out and sewed it onto the base.  I stuffed the dome and sewed up the last part.

I then sewed the dome into the tube of the dalek body.

The dalek now needed some arms. Unfortunately I didn't have any more black pipe cleaners. I did try just using blue ones but it didn't look right when I sewed them in place so I made covers out of leftover black felt.


I still wanted some further detail. To make the eye stalk look more accurate I made the end section using a grey circle folded to curve round and sewn into place, and then added a pale yellow white smaller circle for the centre of the eye stalk. To make the bit before that I had a pipe cleaner in the perfect colour which I just wrapped around tightly to create the blob.


Final details of the dalek

At this point I had found that really interfacing was not enough to hold the dalek up safely without anything inside. So I sewed in some pipe cleaners  inside to give it some extra strength.


This was a real pain at this stage as I also had to cover the ends which are a bit sharp, and sewing inside was a bit arm twisting. Fortunately pipe cleaners are also designed to bend so I could bend them the wrong way to get at things.

I used a similar technique as the end of the eye stalk to make the plunger.


The most fiddly bit was making the other ray gun arm details. The strips of thin grey felt were very fiddly to keep in place and sew into place and would have been much less secure if not for the bands of grey felt circling the arm.


End result is a free standing hollow dalek and Clara!