Elvis on tour

I was asked to make a second dark suited Elvis. I made him in a hurry for a short deadline but the requester didn't end up picking him up in time. He's currently in transit to his new home.

There's not much to say about him in terms of making. I had not got much black fabric as I mentioned earlier so he's actually navy coloured not black like the last one.

You can also see I tried to do a more regular sparkly pattern as well as less after the requester felt he was a bit "Indian".

It took a while for the requester to collect the plushie due to a variety of complications. So at one point while it stayed at my parents. During a house tidying session they tidied him away to the model of The Globe I made for GCSE art many moons ago. He also visited the office of the volunteering I did for a week this summer, from whence he went home with the admin officer who has promised to deliver Elvis on to the requestor....eventually.

I've now done Elvis three times. I'm not sure I'll do it again. Here they all are :

Previously :

The king has left the building ... but er not yet - Elvis in the classic white sparkly suit
Elvis is back - The first stage of making the second Elvis in a black suit
Elvis is leaving the building... again - Final stages of making the second Elvis in a black suit

Elvis is leaving the building....again

So Elvis is done. After some dithering about sparkles I ended up adding more.

 

I also had a debate about adding a cape and decided I would with some friendly support.  Original plan was red lining but there was too much black so it switched to red with black lining.
Hope the customer likes it!

Update 09 June 2013 : customer collected yesterday and seems so pleased she wants a second one for another relative!!

Elvis is back!

Hello first commission with agreement to pay for it!!

She asked for Elvis but in black as a present as white is easy to get grubby.

So I decided I'd do Red and black to make it a little more interesting than black hair and black suit

Then with no sparkly black fabric I started adding on the sparkles I had by hand.

I simultaneously like and don't like how he now looks. And I'm debating if I should remove the sparkles from his waist. Any thoughts people?

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.

The king has left the building...but er, not yet...

So far I've had mostly requests for plushies of people who are basically fictional, even if they are sometimes played by live actors. This was a new thing for me to have a real person, if one who is deceased. It was also difficult to know what would make him really distinctive as the person. The white suit seemed the most obvious choice but actually there are several different white outfits worn by Elvis at different occasions, one of which was literally a white suit. This is the picture that appealed to me from a design point of view.

So then I did a brief sketch.

When I finally came to make it thought I started to dither about how sparkly to make it. So I asked the requestor (it is an anniversary present for her husband) and she liked the idea of sparkles, as did some of my friends.

So I just got to it. The main technical difficulty was that for both hair and clothes I was actually combining two layers of fabric. The sparkly silver was too transparent and stretchy to be stuffed, so I had to sew the two layers together before I could do anything else. The same went for the hair as I had one fabric the right opacity but very slightly patterned so I had to overlay it with a second layer to disguise the patterning.

But it wasn't too difficult to do that and what with my computer being messed but by me being gullible and a stupid spammer guy I actually got it done in very short order. I did have some moments of angst at this point as I really didn't want him to look like he was wearing pajamas. So he got a plain cummerbund and plain white edging to his cuffs and neckline. I should really have given him some black shoes but I lost patience I'm afraid.

I thought a plain contrasting colour cape would help tone down the sparkle, but when a friend suggested white with a red lining I decided I had to go for it. This was obviously very easy so the only problem I ran into was ironing it flat at too high a temperature. It WAS nylon and melted slightly. The second one survived ironing at a lower temperature.


I then found I had run out of stuffing but one of my amazing friends at work again brought me some old cushion stuffing so I was saved!

Somehow even though I sew the template the same each time weird things happen to the way they come out, specially when I start trying to fill them with stuffing. I have decided the slightly non straight stance is because Elvis is dancing. No arguments people!

All that was left was to make some sunglasses. I would have loved to make proper aviators but I'm just not that clever so it was just a simple shape.

I hope my friend's husband likes him! I have got another real person coming up soon.