Sew ALL the Plushies!

One of my (not so) secret addictions is making cute plushies. Unfortunately, adults just don't need that many tiny stuffed things (or large stuffed things, for that matter), so while I occasionally indulge in this addiction by making gifts for people, it's hard to justify making things that are just going to sit around collecting dust.

[Enter SHB, a toddler who loves unicorns and dinosaurs.]

I know unselfish sewing for small children is supposed to be a thankless task, and for the most part it has been -- SHB is not into any of the quilts I made for him, nor the ocean-themed plushies and accessories -- but when the small child is finally old enough to make requests and then express definite (positive) opinions, it suddenly becomes supremely rewarding. Of course, it doesn't hurt that I love the mental exercise of 1) figuring out what aspects of a creature are most important to preserve for maximum recognizability, then 2) translating the 3D stylized creature in my head into 2D pattern pieces, and 3) coming up with a best order of operations for actually sewing up the creature. It's just enough work to feel like I'm exercising my mental muscles, but not so much work that my school-is-out-and-third-trimester-tiredness-is-really-kicking-in brain feels overwhelmed. Also it feels like a still somewhat productive activity as a means of procrastinating re: figuring out a potty training strategy and how on earth I'm going to deal with having two small human beings.

It all started with this Goodnight Moon parody book, Goodnight Unicorn. SHB loves the original classic board book, so I picked this book up at the library because I love parodies/spin-offs and the illustration style appealed to me. For some reason SHB totally latched onto this book, and kept asking where it was after I returned it to the library, and I totally went through a unicorn phase when I was in elementary school, so I was not at all averse to purchasing our own copy. SHB's favorite unicorn was the "jet black," and for some reason toy manufacturers only make pastel-colored unicorns, so it was up to me to make SHB's unicorn toy dreams come true. And of course, in a if-you-give-a-mouse-a-cookie scenario, he then wanted a mommy and daddy unicorn, and then a rainbow unicorn to represent his coming baby sister, and then because the Warriors were in the playoffs, a Steph Curry unicorn, and then things just spiraled out of control.

In the book, the rainbow unicorn and the jet black unicorn sleep in a barn at night.

Steph Curry unicorn with a basketball. I used leftover fabric from the Warriors' pajamas I made a couple Christmases ago. 

He just loves cuddling as many as he can hold at once. 

Current count at ten, but still requested: an orange one, and one with a "patootie," i.e. a cutie mark. I don't know if I'll get around to those, as that would require buying another bag of stuffing. 

And because SHB takes books very seriously, the unicorns needed a rainbow to slide on. Also to please make sure, Mom, that there's pink in the rainbow.

I used craft foam inside the rainbow to get it to stand up. 

I know, I know, he really doesn't need more stuffed toys, but how can I say no when this is the happy face I get when he sees the newest plushie?

And then he immediately has to get the book and copy the picture with his toys. 

I used Nuno Runo's zebra plushie pattern to make the unicorns, and in browsing her other stuffed toy patterns, discovered that there was a stegosaurus pattern as well. Unfortunately, making a stegosaurus just opened up an even bigger can of worms since SHB then realized he could request that Mommy make ALL the dinosaurs. This wouldn't be a problem if he only knew a few dinosaurs, but he has this pack of 30 dinosaur flashcards from the Target dollar section, so after stegosaurus he requested a tyrannosaurus rex, then a triceratops, diplodocus, ankylosaurus, parasaurolophus, brachiosaurus, pterodactyl, pteranodon, and dimetrodon.

I had so much fun designing this pattern! I'm really pleased with how the bony frill turned out. 

The diplodocus was easy; the ankylosaurus' wedge-shaped head, armored back, and clubbed tail was a little trickier. 

The parasaurolophus turned out exactly as I envisioned, but the brachiosaurus' neck had some grain issues so it looks perpetually perplexed with its cocked head. 

Dimetrodon was just a thicker version of the original NunoRuno stegosaurus, but the flying dinosaurs were trickier because they're so unlike any of the other shapes. The magenta one was version 2.0, because the first one was too skinny and fiddly to make, and was missing its hands. 

A favorite activity: matching the dinosaurs to their flashcards. Poor (magical) liopleurodon, of Charlie the Unicorn fame, doesn't have a flashcard. 

As I got better at making dinosaur patterns, I realized that my original T. rex didn't really look very accurate, so then I went back and improved the pattern to give it a boxier head and allow it to sit up better. And once I made two, because toddlers are nothing if not consistent, SHB labeled them as the parents, which meant that once again, we needed the rest of the family...

According to SHB, he is the purple one because he loves ube ice cream, I am the teal one, Mr. Cation is the magenta one, and baby sister is the seafoam one. 

I then turned the original derpy T. rex into a dragon since the unicorn book features a red dragon, but (and you can probably guess what's coming) it didn't look very dragon-y either, so then I had to make a better one. SHB requested purple, so I gave it orange accents so that it would look like Figment.

A pair of wings and horns does not a dragon make. "Mom, where the bony plates on his back?" Okay fine, you picky boy, I'll make a better one. 

There, bony plates added. Happy now? (Also the creeper gingerbread man who looks more like a voodoo doll than anything was added by SHB while I was taking pictures of the dragons.)

All this to say, SHB now has a veritable menagerie that he sleeps with every night. Which is more trouble for me, because now there are thirty-odd creatures that we need to track down every night and they barely fit on his bed, and if he wakes up in the middle of the night and can't find one of them in the dark, he'll start crying until I get up and help him find the prodigal plushie. Sigh. Mr. Cation has very little sympathy for me, though, since, as he rightly pointed out, this is really a problem of my own making. Literally.

This isn't even the entire collection of his "friends." There are more that can't fit, but this is the core group.

Eventually, I'd like to turn the dragon and dinosaurs into cleaned up patterns, but with only a month to go until baby girl's arrival, that's unlikely to happen anytime soon. My one goal is to make a quilt for her so that she has at least one new thing that's all hers and not a hand-me-down from her big brother...

Stingray Plushie Pattern

Even though I'm teaching my two favorite classes, both of which are not new preps for me by any means, and my students are pretty great for the most part, this school year has still been one of the hardest I've ever had, and we're not even two months in! I think it's the struggle to balance time with SHB, time with Mr. Cation, time to grade papers (oh, how I sometimes wish I had a job that didn't require bringing work home!), and time to pursue my own interests. Poor Walnut often gets the short end of the stick, as do the papers, to be perfectly honest. SHB is so active now (and going through separation anxiety) that there's really no getting things done while he's awake. As a result, all my plans for a grand Pinterest-worthy theme party (Sandra Boynton! LOTR! Cats!) for his first birthday went out the window. Still, even if we were ordering cake and using mismatched disposable plates, the maker in me couldn't let go of at least making something, anything, just to personalize it a little. 

Since SHB's baby shower and nursery were marine-themed, I decided that making sea animal plushies/beanbags for his little baby friends was a doable undertaking that would be kind of on theme. Because Back to School Night was two days before his party (seriously, whose bright idea was it to have a birthday at such a busy time of year?!), I ended up staying up late the night before to make six of the simplest animal I could come up with: stingrays! No fiddly little flippers or fins or snouts, no appliques or weird pieces to insert. For a last minute project, it went fairly quickly and smoothly for once!

Except for this guy: his eyes make him look especially derpy, and his mouth ended up too large and off-center...ah, the perils of being the experimental prototype!

I didn't stop to take pictures while I was churning these guys out, so no tutorial here, but it's a fairly simple plushie to make. If you'd like to take a stab at your own stingrays, I've made the pattern (and brief instructions) available for download here. 

Summary:

Pattern: My own

Fabric: 1/4 yard of gray anti-pill fleece (enough for six rays)

Notions: Are polyfil fiber stuffing and beads notions?

Hours: Four, from drawing the pattern to cutting to sewing and then stuffing. Not bad at all! Assembly line stitching works really well for mass production.

Total cost: All the materials were from my stash, but they probably average out to about $1.50 each.

Will you make it again? After reading the comments on my IG posts, I'd love to make an enormous one big enough to wrap yourself in like some kind of weird sleeping bag/bed-type thing. You could sleep on the stuffed body and use the fins like blankets! Maybe one day when SHB is older he'll want such a thing. 

Final thoughts: Even though I didn't "hardcore" DIY SHB's party, I'm really glad I at least personalized this one little aspect. Plus, it was an immensely satisfying race-to-beat-the-deadline project, which is unusual. I secretly love the intense motivation I get when I'm mildly stressed and racing against the clock, but that situation usually sets me up for stupid mistakes when I'm sewing. I guess it's a testament to how easy these guys were to make that they came together so smoothly!

I don't know what it is about a whole bunch of more or less identical tiny derpy animals all gathered in one spot, but I was seriously in love with my little rays and ever so briefly considered keeping them all. Instead, I settled with posing them with my manatee made from the same gray fleece:

Speaking of the manatee, this is probably the coolest thing that's happened to one of my plushie patterns:

No, Dr. Frankenstein didn't get ahold of it. 

I don't understand most of what the article is about, but if you scroll halfway down she talks about using the manatee pattern to house a device to help stay in touch with their elderly loved ones. So neat! Also, w00t w00t female engineers!

The Geekiest Baby: A Firefly-Themed Birthday Present

"Yes... yes. This is a fertile land, and we will thrive.
We will rule over all this land, and we will call it... This Land." 

"I think we should call it... your grave!" 

"Ah! Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!"

"Hahaha! Mine is an evil laugh!"

I promise this is the last SHB-related sewing for a while! I'm tired of making tiny things and will go back to making Large Human Being items. But indulge me in this last project.

SHB's friend (okay, the child of my friend, because babies don't really have friends) turned one this last weekend and we were invited to his birthday party. I wanted to make a little something for him, and research shows that beanbags are a good item to make for a small human being. While I would ordinarily just go for cats like Gillian did, I realize that not everyone has seen the light is a cat person. Now, this kid's mom is a huge Firefly fan too, though, so I racked my brains trying to figure out what I could make that would be rated G. Reaver beanbags? Dead-body-that's-not-actually-dead beanbags? Stolen-drugs-from-an-Alliance-hospital-for-selling-on-the-black-market beanbags? Hmm, maybe not. But wait! Wash has dinosaurs on the dashboard! Only thing is, how can I make them specifically Firefly dinosaurs, and not just generic dinosaurs? And that's when I decided that a tiny grave plushie was appropriate. Further stash searching revealed that I still had fabric from this dress leftover, which was perfect for making a drawstring playmat "This Land" to go with the beanbags.

I think the little fabric tag on the drawstring makes it look more real.

With the beanbags for a size comparison.

Summary:
Pattern: None for the beanbags, I just freehanded them. As for the playmat, does one really need a pattern for a circle?
Fabric: Fleece scraps from the stash for the beangbags, thrifted cotton sheets for the playmat (one square yard each for the front and back)
Notions: Polyfil stuffing and beads for the beanbags, cotton cord for the playmat drawstring
Hours: An hour and half for the beanbags and an hour for the mat.
Will you make it again? I still have enough fabric to make a set for SHB when he gets older...
Final thoughts: Thankfully, my friend appreciated the humor of the set and didn't think it was morbid to give a grave to a one year old as a birthday present.

As far as I'm concerned, this is the only appropriate use of the Papyrus font, and only just barely. 

This is also the same friend who loaned us this Jayne hat so that SHB could take a picture with his Blue Sun shirt:

"You know what the chain of command is? It's the chain I go get and beat you with until you understand who's in ruttin' command here." Hmm, somehow plastic links don't seem that scary, although there's no doubt that it's his nap schedule that's in command of our lives over here. 

Okay, that's the end of geekcrafting for SHBs for a while. I've got a couple of unblogged fancy dresses to show off, just as soon as I sort through the photos!

Hammerhead Shark Plushie Pattern and Tutorial

I know, I know, it's not Shark Week for another couple of months...but what can I say, I was still high on the thrill of having done so much cute sewing for the SHB Sew-Along. Speaking of the sew-along, we'll be doing a roundup and announcing the winners by the end of the week. It's been ridiculously difficult choosing because of how good the entries are! We wish we could give prizes to everyone, but alas, we must try to narrow it down to three winners.

Like these three sharks. Each shark represents a category? 

Anyway, I didn't know what to sew next, so I figured I might as well clean up my hammerhead shark plushie pattern. I spent a whole naptime digging through my box of self-drawn patterns, only to realize that I must have recycled the original pattern pieces, because who needs more than one hammerhead shark? This meant I had to redraw and retest a new pattern, which resulted in two more sharks: the red one was a little longer and skinnier than looked proportional, so I had to make the pink one to test my modifications. Yay, a trilogy! I love trilogies. Although, a trilogy of shark sounds like it might be on the menu of a very un-politically correct, not-at-all-environmentally-minded exotic meats restaurant.

The final pattern and brief instructions can be downloaded here, and I ask that if you link to it, you link to this blog post and not the direct download link. As always, any sharks that you make from this pattern should be for personal, non-commercial use only, i.e. please don't go selling these sharks at craft fairs and such.

If you're an experienced sewer/plushie-maker, it should be a relatively quick project; I finished my second shark, from cutting to sewing the side closed, all in an hour,  so when SHB woke up there was a new toy to chew/lick/suck on. I guess in that way, the trilogy of shark is on his menu.

If you've never made a plushie before or just want a step-by-step tutorial, I took the time to photograph the making of the last shark.

1) Sew mouth onto ventral (belly) piece. 

2) Sew fin pieces. Put the mirrored pieces right sides together (RST), sew, trim, and then flip. 

3) Place the dorsal pieces RST and sew A-B, the eyestalk edge.

This is what it should look like after you've sewn the pieces together. 

4) Sew the eyes onto the eyestalk over the A-B seam.
Mine is just a plain black circle, but you can also make a more standard eye with a black pupil on a white eyeball. 

5) Pin and baste the dorsal fin in place... 

...and sew all the way from point C down the back, around the tail, and ending at the dot on the pattern. Backstitch.

6) Pin and baste the side fins onto the ventral piece.
This looks so weird, doesn't it?

There, it looks more normal with the dorsal part flipped down. 

7) Sew the dorsal part to the ventral piece, leaving a gap in the side between the two dots. Backstitch. 

You'll use this gap to turn and stuff the shark. 

8) Turn right side out...

...and stuff! Use a chopstick to poke the filling into the eyestalks and tail first, then plump up the rest of the body. 

9) Ladder stitch the side gap closed.  

10) You're done! Enjoy your new sharkie friend!

All the sharks posing with the shark panel on SHB's quilt. 

Part of me is very tempted to make fifty more sharks from all my fleece scraps (sharks in every color of the rainbow!), and another part of me (the saner, more reasonable part, to my husband's relief) says there are better things I could be doing with my time (and our available storage space). So as much as I enjoy mass producing plushies, I will refrain (at least until SHB is old enough to request more, at which point I will happily acquiesce). But for those of you who don't already have two sharks too many, I hope you enjoy making one (or twenty) so that I can live vicariously through you!

Or maybe the pink and blue shark could get together and make lots of little baby sharks, while the goofy-looking red shark looks on like the most clueless third wheel ever... "Dude, can't you take a hint?"

The Geekiest Baby: Middle Earth Themed Accessories

We last left SHB (Small Hobbit Baby) in the Shire, playing with his One Teething Ring. After his shocking discovery of the Black Speech runes-revealed-by-drool, he realized that the only thing to do was to try to destroy the ring, So he started his long journey to Mordor, passing the Misty Mountains along the way. While taking a rest stop, he came across an old friend.

It's Smaug!!! Cue the screaming like when Lucille Bluth sees Gene Parmesan. 

Hey Chiefest and Greatest of Calamities, remember how I was able to sneak by you before?
Well, it was because of this magic ring of mine. 

See? It's got runes all over it. 

Okay, enough about me and my ring, let's see if your armor is still like tenfold shields, your teeth like swords, your claws spears, the shock of your tail a thunderbolt, your wings a hurricane, and your breath death!
Hmm, this spike is kind of bendy...looks like you've let yourself go!

Ooh, the sun is coming up. Well, it's been nice catching up, but I gotta go destroy the ring. 

Sigh, who knows when we'll see each other again? I kind of miss that little Barrel-Rider. 

Wait a second, I totally forgot I had this palantir! Maybe I'll just give him a call. Does that make me look too needy?

I think someone's calling on the palantir! Who could it be? 

Hello? Who are you and where do you come from, may I ask? 

Oh hey Smaug. Didn't we just hang out? Why are you calling already? Aren't you supposed to wait three days or something?

Dangit, I knew it was too soon. Why didn't I wait? Why do I never wait?
This is why I don't have friends; I always try too hard and scare them away. 

Okay, I know, I've got the story all wrong, but maybe SHB's cuteness will pacify all the upset Tolkien-fans who insist on strict accuracy.

As I mentioned before, I had some necessary items that I had to make for the SHB Sew-Along, and I had some frivolous items. Now that SHB is no longer a floppy newborn, he doesn't need the nursing pillow for nursing, but it's still useful as a lounging/climbing/teething pillow, and it was beginning to accumulate a rather impressive amount of drool. Spot cleaning gets old really fast, so I wanted to make a washable cover. Of course, I can't leave well enough alone, so instead of making a quick and easy utilitarian cover, I took this idea and put my own geeky spin on it. So instead of taking less than an hour, this cover took...significantly more than that. Totally worth it, though!

There's a large patch in the hollow of his left breast as bare as a snail out of its shell...I mean, there's a zipper...for easy removal for laundering purposes. 

As for the toy palantir, well, Mr. Cation wanted SHB to get familiar with handling round objects since I can't play any ball sports to save my life, so maybe early practice will keep SHB from being the pariah of pick-your-teammates P.E. classes. Again, I could've kept it simple, but this was right after the LOTR concert so I was inspired. I actually made the fancy one first, but then realized I liked it too much (and put in too much time hand-stitching) to let SHB go to town on it, so I made him his own, simpler palantir. Unfortunately, because there was less stretch in the black fabric, it ended up being less round. So much for practicing handling spheres!

Summary:
Patterns: The palantiri were made with this pattern, plus my own added eye bits. This tutorial was the basis for the pillow cover, and then lots of self-drafted pieces for the horns, wings, spikes, and face.
Fabric: One and a third yards of red fleece for the cover, plus various scraps of black fleece; various scraps for the palantiri, all from stash.
Notions: Velcro to attach the wings (because Smaug's a wingaling dragon!) and a 24" zipper for the dragon, polyfil stuffing for the palantiri

I had to make the picture grayscale in order for the details to show up at all, but the wings can detach!

Hours: Five for the cover, half an hour for the simple palantir, 1.5 hours for the fancy one.
Total cost: $5 for the red fleece; everything else was stash.
Final thoughts: I am so pleased with myself, even if both cover + toy turned out unnecessarily complicated! Sometimes you just gotta do things that make you happy, even when it's not efficient or practical. Also, red and black are ridiculously hard to photograph.

In case you're wondering about poor overeager Smaug, he did eventually find happiness. The third palantir belonged to Walnut, who was perfectly happy to answer the call to cuddle in the sunlight with a dragon.

I did not pose Walnut. I added the palantir, of course, but he snuggled up next to Smaug all on his own. 

And SHB did make it to Mt. Doom to dispose of the ring.

And that concludes the epic tale of the SHB Sew-Along over here at Cation Designs!