Tagged: sewing plush

January 10, 2012

prehistoric plush: dunkleosteus

Theodore Roosevelt summed it up best with this quote:
“whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell ’em, ‘certainly i can!’ then get busy and find out how to do it.”

a dunkleosteus rendering (source: wikipedia)

Dunkleosteus: a big, old fish.

I think, barring anything incredibly complex, it’s a great philosophy. So when one of my photography friends said, “hey sam, can you make a plush dunkleosteus?” I said, “sure!”

(well, first i said “what is that?!” and he told me it was a giant dinosaur fish thing.)

At first, I was worried. Those teeth, all the layers of bone, all the details and hard edges… what if I couldn’t do it? But it was one of those moments where, as soon as I stopped thinking about it, I could see it perfectly in my head. It’s a plush, right? I can do plush. At that point I gave myself a pep talk, rushed to Joann’s, snagged a ton of gray fleece, and got to work.

This was one of the most complex plush I’ve ever made: he’s got side flippers, a top fin, little tail fins. With all the “bone”/exoskeleton layers, the back of his body is three layers of fleece. And then there are those teeth! Man, those were tricky. Symmetry is always a challenge.

He took longer than expected, because there was a lot of pattern drafting to be done. But I think he was worth the wait. Wanna see?

I just love his goofy smile, and the fleece, as always, is just so soft. I also finally broke into the ultimate safety eye stash that I’ve been hoarding for a few years now – it sure is handy to have some of every safety eye lying around!

I just love doing custom plush. It’s always a scary challenge, but they usually come out alright, and that just feels so good! Do you like it?

January 21, 2011

the beastie!

At the end of September, I received a delightful email request from Collyn (pronounced Colleen) in Canada. She and her best friend came up with a small creature, nicknamed “The Beastie”. In her words, “this furry creature is a symbol of all the wonder and amazement over the small experiences in life that only children and kids could feel”. Since they attend separate universities now, they send letters back and forth to each other (because snail mail is awesome!) and they often doodle the little guy on notes and such.

For Christmas*, she decided a plush beastie would be the absolute perfect gift for her friend. Of course, I was absolutely flattered to be chosen for the challenge.

She sent me a few scanned doodles, along with his preferred color: gray with pink and yellow accents. I spent a few weeks hunting down the most perfectly soft fur I could find, and then it was sewing time.

from this... (doodles of the beastie)

...to this. (the finished, super huggable beastie.)

From the tips of his stripey horns to the bottom of his soft belly, it sure was hard to let him go! I’d forgotten how much I absolutely love fleece applique, how fun it is to sew on little details and make sure everything is exactly perfect. I hadn’t done anything of the sort since Bloo, or the goomba before him. I’d forgotten that, even though I can’t draw, I can make anything as long as I’ve got some scissors. This was a great stretching project for me, a great creative exercise.

But of course, above all, it felt so good to be able to give these friends a real, soft, huggable beastie.

*side note… she asked me to start on a Christmas present in september! so awesome! it’s nice to know there are people in the world who know how long things can take :)

January 19, 2011

why, hello there!

I hope your 2011 has been going along nicely. Mine, so far, has started slowly. This January, for me, has been a month of observing.

I’m typically a do-er, a producer. I sew and photograph and blog. But in these last couple weeks, I’ve been listening, reading, and observing instead; I’ve been quieting myself down a bit so I can hear what’s going on in the outside world. All of it has been a nice respite from the pre-Christmas narwhal frenzy… even though I’m still making plenty.

But I don’t want to sit in my quiet little world forever. And now that Christmas gift-time is over, I can share some pictures of the custom narwhals that were requested over the holidays.

giant stuffed narwhal
A double-size narwhal! These were requested by multiple separate people, which I found interesting… maybe they should become a permanent Fluffyland fixture? They were definitely fun to make… it felt awesome to be making such large plush.

blue stuffed narwhal
A blue narwhal! I’ve considered adding an option to choose narwhals in other colors, but for now it’s by request only. It would make inventory considerably more difficult with a rainbow palette… so we’ll see how that looks in the future.

stuffed narwhal with a purple heart
And a stuffed narwhal with a little purple heart! I much prefer applique to embroidery. I didn’t have time to do any name embroideries this Christmas, plus they’re really not something I like to do. But every once in awhile, a narwhal just needs a little extra something and I understand that.

That certainly wasn’t all the special Christmas sewing I did… there were also the more exciting, out-of-the-box, completely narwhal-unrelated projects that I took on. I’ll post pictures of those tomorrow!