Crafting General Thread

[skinstealer]

yessss join us. Join Us. here's a good tut for basics: https://cholyknight.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/plush-sewing-basics-ebook.pdf

i personally recommend picking up some Fat Quarters- they're pieces of fabric that are a quarter yard, and are excellent for getting a whole bunch of colors/patterns without committing to a huge amount of anything. you can even get them in themed packs!

as for our own things...

[image description: an axolotl plush made out of blue socks and rainbow cotton fabric. it has red eyes and a disgruntled yellow smile. ]

[image description: a beanie baby bear-esque plush made out of solid blue fabric, rainbow stripe fabric, and black and white skull fabric. it is lumpy and has white button eyes, a yellow button nose, and a goofy, yellow, jagged embroidered mouth.]

the plush rush continues. technically i have another, much larger plush, that is like 90% done, but he's not ready for the spotlight until i get those final details done. maybe i'll do that tonight? idk.

as you can see i'm still getting the hang of technique, but i think i'm coming along. i really, REALLY need to learn how to fasten buttons on better, and my ladder stitch and i are locked into deadly combat every day of my life. there's still a bunch of supplies i'm either obtaining or just got today, slowly beefing up our repository of Stuff To Work With. at the very least, i'm pretty confident in our ability to match fabric, at this point!

so, onto the plushes themselves: i've got an axolotl we made for our friend andy as an extra special get-well-gift- he's made out of socks and, as usual, a fat quarter. granted, not much of a fat quarter, but still. the sock was extra squishy so this guy is soooo soft and stimmy, and i really like the color matching- but oh god i had a HORRIBLE time getting those rainbow pieces inside out. this was also our first time really making a deliberate pattern of our own since childhood, and boy i learned a lot about scaling pieces. i actually have another axolotl in our queue for one of our IRL friends now, and i'm hoping the frills come out a little chunkier and at minimum, easier to flip.

the second one...i need to do like, a proper whole ass blog post on the second one. jesus. the tldr for now is that this guy is off of a vintage Simplicity pattern from 1999 that was meant to knock off beanie babies during the peak of the fad's hype, making it one of the closest patterns that is available for beanie baby bears (and others, the pack has like 8 designs in it). the patterns themselves are simplicity 8091 crafts, but due to them being old as shit and no longer in production, i will likely be archiving them on our site after vectorizing them or something. i have a high quality photo that works at scan quality, so i should be able to convert them okay, as well as transcribe the instructions. it will be a long process, but i am looking forward to the results! in any case- the main differences are that the plush is a tad bigger overall (though they fit into 20 cm doll clothes near perfectly..............) and the face is. well it's not the iconic face but i'm working on figuring out how to either modify the pattern or thread sculpt that sucker into getting pretty damn close. we'll see! either way, the euphoria of being able to make one of these is real af. hooray!