The Loch Ness Plushie

This wasn't on my to-do list. So of course I wanted to make it instead of, say, that skirt or my trouser cuffs. Or anything practical whatsoever.

But man, can you blame me? It's a bright pink Nessie!

Isn't it too cute to refuse?

I've been collecting plushie patterns over on my Pinterest, and now at last I've manned up and made one. It was a learning process. And an excuse to break out my sewing machine again, safely upstairs where the puppy couldn't try to eat the wires.

She may look sweet, but if you seem remotely chewable she's a killing machine.

Anyhow, the Loch Ness Monster. I found the pattern over here on PickledOkra, where the blog runner has adapted it from a super cute knitting pattern. So of course I had to make it. I'm pretty sure I would never forgive myself if I passed up the chance to sew a tiny plesiosaur.

PickledOkra has very kindly provided a free pattern to print, but a) ink is expensive and b) I wanted to resize it anyway, so instead of printing I copied the pattern pieces freehand onto some paper. The shapes are fairly simple, so it worked a treat. And since my felt came in a4 sheets, drawing on a4 paper meant it was easy to make sure I would have enough fabric.

Eventually, after cutting out all the pieces and pinning them together, it looked something like this:

...which, if you follow me on Facebook, you might have already seen. But it's all unmapped territory from here, folks.

I decided that the solid pink was a bit boring, and some spots would liven it right the hell up. So I gave that pink some spots. Stuffed spots.

I broke out the blanket stitch to attach them. I'm getting quite proud of my blanket stitching; I still screw up and make it look shoddy sometimes, but that's already getting rarer. I think it's my patience I need to work on as much as anything else.

To make the spots, I cut out largish circles of yellow felt, then blanket stitched each one onto the right side of the pink felt. Before I was done stitching round the circumference of a spot, I grabbed a bit of stuffing (I got a massive bag from a haberdashery for £1.60 back in uni) and pushed it in with the blunt end of my seam ripper. You could use a pencil, the bottom of a felt tip, heck, anything thin enough to fit through the hole but wide enough to push the stuffing into place. Then I finished sewing up the gap using the same blanket stitch. Voila. Repeat.

I swear this project was charmed, by the way, because I somehow managed to have felt, thread, and the right size buttons all in perfectly matching yellow. It just all came together and worked. Is this how sewing professionals feel all the time??

Once I'd stitched on the spots and eyes, I machine stitched the heck out of the flippers, turned them inside out, and wrinkled them up. Then I put a few messy stitches through the ends to keep those wrinkles in place.

Those finished flippers went straight inside my newly re-pinned-up body.

Re: sewing the body: I machine stitched the line of the spine, including where it curved around the head. But when it came to the other two body seams on left and right, touching the green belly, it wasn't so simple. You see those flippers? You see where they're folded over? That's like, five plus layers of felt shoved on top of each other, sandwiching a bunch of thread. Ain't no sewing machine needle got time for that.

So I hand sewed the other two seams with a nice, semi-amateurish back stitch. And on the right hand side I left a gap between flippers, so that I could turn the thing right side out (bit pointless if I can't do that) and then stuff it (ditto what I just said).

And the turning inside out went... uh...

It... it went.

I can see the head! KEEP PUSHING!!

Congratulations. It's a deflated plesiosaur.

Now that I was done with the harrowing experience of shoving its face out from the inside, I went ahead and stuffed the plushie. I used my seam ripper again, along with a pen, to shove the stuffing evenly into those hard-to-reach corners.

Then I attempted to close the gap with an invisible seam. But I should note that "attempted" is really the operative word here.

You -- yes, you there reading this -- I don't know if you sew, so let me explain. You can skip this paragraph if you don't need it. See, all the other stitching, when I turned the plushie inside out, ended up on the inside. No big, ugly stitches, just nice clean seams (or as clean as they can be when I'm still a bit shaky on sewing in a straight line). Brilliant, right?

Well, yes, until I have to close the hole. Then I have to replicate that nice clean smooth seam -- while stitching from the outside.

Okay, seams 101 is done, you can zone back in now if that was all old news to you. :)

I stumbled across a tutorial not so long ago which seemed straightforward enough. But when I came to try it out, I didn't quite get the 'invisible' part of the invisible seam. I'll be frank, it's not the most invisible thing I've ever seen. It's downright visible, in fact.

With hindsight, and a bit more self-discipline, I probably should have tested the thing on some scrap fabric to make sure I understood the instructions. But by this point I was impatient to finish the plushie and admire the fruit of my labours. Welp. My loss.

It looks rather good otherwise, though, doesn't it?

Did plesiosaurs... have such large flippers in back...? Uh -- look, a distraction!

Yes, look at this! I thought a little bow around its neck would be cute, so I fashioned one based on this picture tutorial. It was really crazy simple to cut out the shapes freehand and then use wee tiny stitches to fix them together.

And it totally does look cute!

 

Okay, I have said "cute" about five hundred times too many in this post. I am officially cuted out. Goodnight everyone, and I hope you have enjoyed seeing this Scottish myth immortalised in stylish magenta.