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.

Mucking up a doll, part 1

I want to make a doll to dress up. I have never made a doll before.

Cue lots of experimentation!

Does it look like I know what the heck I'm doing? I genuinely can't tell.

(Don't mind the instagrammy look, I'm just trying it out.) (And next post I am going to stop trying it out.)

Okay, anyway, so here I've started with sketches. What I want is something more shapely than your average sack-shaped rag doll, for dressing up purposes. Technically I could buy a Barbie or something, and I admit there's a special place in my heart for those Monster High toys, but I really like the idea of inventing a doll from scratch and giving it its own personality and whatnot. That, plus Monster High dolls are costly and I'm a miserly little git.

Making a doll it is, then. I couldn't find any free patterns which a) look the way I want and b) are within my ability to sew, so I decided I would mock something up myself.

And then tweak it, and then tweak it some more, and then sew in terror, braced for something to go dreadfully wrong.

Uh, here's the draft that's gotten the furthest so far.

The problems with her are kind of hurting me.

I've both overcomplicated things and made her body too boxy. I didn't plan her arms' placement very well, and so now they sit about three miles south of her shoulders. And her face is... you know what, the less said about her face the better.

Shudder.

I do like her hair, though. I styled it off a few 50s hairstyles I found on Pinterest, and it's really turned out rather nice. I made an attempt at embroidery to define the bouncy curls:

...And sewed a third piece onto the reverse side of the largest one, to thicken it up and hide the backside of the embroidery.

I've felt honour-bound to try to finish this stupid thing. But I think it's time to admit it's a lost cause and use what I've learned on a new doll. A simpler doll. One which doesn't look like a crate crossed with a Willy Wonka-brand realdoll. I would like that very much.

I tell you what, though. I'm always reluctant to test things out (cough amateur seeing patterns cough), because I'm eager to jump in feet first. But in the end I'm always glad I did the tests. It's almost like I'm getting an important life lesson from this stuff!

Anyway, I'm enjoying this doll project, so keep your eye on the blog for future attempts. The next one will definitely be simpler good lord.

Lightweight Boxing

I need to get my storage situation in order, and what better way to do that than to get a bunch of felt and make fancy little boxes?

Well, I could go down to IKEA and buy some plastic crates. But that sounds almost sensible and practical, and so I don't want anything to do with it. Let's make some boxes!

Before starting to box, I looked around a bit for interesting patterns. A lot of the ones I found called for stuff like batting, or interfacing, or sewing machine needles that punch through cardboard, and I admit it, I don't have any of those. I'm sure I could get hold of one or two for a future project, but this box I wanted to start more quickly. Patience, what's that?

In the end, I settled on a great tutorial from The B-Line. You can find it here if you want to follow along!

The short version is this: cut out big felt circles, fold them into a box/bowl shape, sew, cut. Each layer of felt shows through where you cut, for these striking lines of colour.

The blog runner over there has made some really lovely boxes using this method, big and small. They look like something you could buy from a nice home & furniture store. My first box is, uh... less professional-looking.

But it has personality!?

Because I was making such a small box, I decided to only use two layers of felt, one on the outside and one to line. I didn't want the sides to be disproportionately thick. And I figured that since the box was so tiny, they weren't about to droop under their own weight.

As you can see, I did just four sides too. The tutorial is for boxes with like six or eight sides, but that would have left my box all corner and no flat side, and I knew that I wanted to try some appliqué.

This method of box-making is great for appliqué, because once you've folded in the circles and cut away the excess, you're left with a decent amount of spare felt. There's probably less if you're making a box with more sides. But I wanted that excess for my creative misadventures.

If you're wondering what stitch I used for the sewing, the answer is: all of them. This box is a mish-mash of experiments. I went for a contrast of bright yellow thread on green for the blanket stitch that holds the thing together. On the little Dedenne... it's really anyone's guess. Backstitching hadn't occurred to me yet, genius that I am, so anything that looks like a backstitch is actually a running stitch that I doubled back on itself. The rims of the ears are a blanket stitch with a running stitch next to it, and the cheeks and paws are... um... a dedicated frenzy stitch?

I started to regret the green contrast stitch about halfway through. But by then I had done the whiskers over it, and it was too late to turn back.

That yellow hamster thing, by the way, is a Pokemon from the new XY games. Its name is Dedenne and it's definitely not a Pikachu.

Did I nail it? I think I nailed it.

Pictured here with thread, tube of beads, and seam ripper. So that's three things down, eight hundred thousand more to find storage for. Let's go!

Woop woop woop woop woop (translation: here's another post)

A couple more projects to go, and then we'll be on real-time posts about what I'm making right now. I know. It's fascinating.

So after I made that puppet, I decided that Operation: Drown Brother In Stupid Gifts should continue. To that end I attempted an iPhone case. I figured it'd be easiest to model it off an actual iPhone to get the dimensions right, but I don't have one, so in the end we had the following conversation:

"Can I borrow your phone?" "What for?" "It's a secret." "........"

Wisely or unwisely, he let me borrow the phone. Heh. Heh. Heh.

Hey, so I should mention quickly that my brother and I are both massive Pokemon dorks.

And that's how this abomination of nature was born.

Woop woop!

I used red, orange, and blue felt to make it, plus buttons for the eyes. Remember the Aquaman puppet had buttons for eyes as well? I love button eyes on things, they're completely adorable.

And it has a little pocket for a charger or headphones! In its little mouth! I'm still proud of that idea.

I wanted to make the case quietly, since it was a top-secret project and all, so the whole thing is hand-sewn. My first attempt at blanket stitching went... okay, I suppose. I definitely learned that I need to stitch smaller when going round a curve. Just look at those damn antennae. They're a mess.

The corners are a bit too chunky, too. Since this one, I've learned to snip the corners diagonally before turning a project right side out, in order to make sure that doesn't happen. I'm quite happy with how much I learned making this case, not gonna lie.

Check out the back, complete with little Wooper tail! Yes, that's another button holding on the tail. I thought it was pleasingly Eeyore-like.

But please, avert your eyes from the monstrosity that is that blanket stitch. I thought using black thread would give the whole thing a cool cartoony outline, and it sort of does, but it also shows up my mistakes pretty horribly.

If I made it again, I think I'd make those orange antennae sturdier. Maybe layer up two or three things of felt instead of just one. I could make them shorter as well, so that they're less liable to get caught on stuff in a bag or something. I feel like the case has ended up a bit too delicate to be really portable, and it's 90% the fault of those antennae.

My brother freaking loved it though, and that's what I was making it for, so overall I call this project a success!

I've been thinking about how to make this kind of thing with less felt. The case is neat, but it's kind of bulky. I could leave out the lining, but I don't want to lose the pocket... I wonder if a lining of thinner cotton fabric would work? I might have to give up on the tongue, but hey, it'd be for the greater good. Straight up blanket stitching the main body together (as opposed to sewing it with the right sides together and then turning it inside out) might make it naturally thinner as well. Definitely something to try.

I guess what I'm saying is: watch this space for more!

Blog-man, the man with the power to blog

Hello, hello!

The big challenge of starting a blog is always the first post, isn't it? It's like looking at a blank sheet of paper and willing yourself to write, only multiplied. Do you start with a generic introduction? Do you launch right into the meat of whatever the blog is about?

I vote for a bit of both, so here goes: I'm Caz. I'm 24, the age at which you realise you were never as old as you thought and now you're older than you thought you would be. I've lived in Chile for a while, struggling to learn the language, and now I'm back home for a siesta.

The most important parts of home are friends, family, and the sewing machine I couldn't fit in my luggage two years ago. Boy, was I excited to come home.

I didn't waste much time getting started:

My brother is one of the three people on Earth who like Aquaman. And Christmas was just round the corner, so I thought: you know what one of his presents can be? Something utterly ridiculous!

I made the pattern myself. Got the basic shape by drawing around my own hand, then drawing again and bigger to allow for his massive man hands. After that, it was just a case of cutting out shapes for the shirt, belt, hair, and so on. (With a few cheeky last-minute edits when he mentioned that he liked the bearded, rugged Aquaman better than the clean-shaven one.)

The buttons have been sitting in my sewing box since university, waiting for a worthy project. They've finally found one. I think they must have been spare buttons from some clothing item that's been lost to the mists of time.

I sewed the little scales on his shirt by hand. As you can see, it was the first time I'd hand-sewn anything in a loooong time.

Sadly, no progress photos. I hadn't decided to make a blog back then.

But hey. Not bad for a first puppet or a first post, eh?