Be Excellent To Each Other

In an attempt to rid get myself away from a computer screen, two years ago I made a promise to get myself doing more interesting things with my life than debugging hideous code interactions on websites. I ended up making a big modroc mask, a crazy costume, silly shoes, and a ridiculous hat.

But now I have another new hobby!



U WOT M8?

While I was walking to the next town over in the absolute pissing freezing horrible rain just to buy a single sheet of plastic, I stopped in at a strange second-hand shop that I didn't expect to be open. (Most places like that shut at 4pm, this was almost 5pm.)

They have the usual stack of car-boot things that make me puke by looking at them, and that I'd rather saw my hands off than be forced to touch, and a whole stack of rotten-paged Tom Clancy novels and Peter James' famous Dead You Super Dead Very Dead Like The Dead Who Are DEAD series.

And beside all those, a very large hardbound book with a curiously intact intact dustjacket:



It's Making Soft Toys For Children by Pamela Peake! I say that as if I know who that is or I'm familiar with the book, I'm not! But it looks pretty good. These folks on the cover remind me of a bunch of really old animal toys my mum has. She was going to chuck 'em out but I went 'noooo wayyyy'.

It's a reassuringly old and expensive feeling book (it's from 1988), chunky as hell. Full colour printing, and very nice individual photographs of all the stuff you can make. There's four categories of toy: nursery items + floppy toys, dolls, animals, and animals in clothes!



I really like these double page photographs with all the characters lined up together. How could you not want to make all of these things? Like... the cubes! Or the football! Or the grotesque Man In The Moon?



I'm not a fan of these dolls, but purchasers of this book are spoiled for choice as to the kind of doll-that-I-don't-like that they can make!



I've not made a soft toy before, though my recent monstrosity is close to a soft toy I suppose. (Coming to an MCM Comic Con near you soon!!)

I was mostly curious if they had any dragons in there, and they did! But it was 'Oliver Ocelot' on this page that made me buy the book instantly 'cause he's simply too cute.



The wonderful folks at the model shop were kind enough to give me a few extra bags so I could get my book and my plastic home without them getting completely drenched. It was raining enough to wash all the black out of my socks and make my jeans feel like cardboard afterwards.

When I'd finally gotten home, I settled down with a cup of tea and flicked through the book to see if there was anything else other than dragons and lots 'n' lots of ocelots.

Hey look an Awesome Panda!


I've never heard of a panda referred to as a 'beshiung-chin' before. Today I learned that 'panda' is commonly written in China using the characters for 'big bear cat' 大熊猫 'Dà xióngmāo', and that the kanji for cat is the same 猫 in China and Japan except in China it's pronounced 'maow' and in Japan it's pronounced 'neko'.

'White bear' is 白熊 'Báixióng', which is pronounced 'bai-shiung' which now refers to polar bears as far as I can tell. Though Google does list a Van Nostrand’s Scientific Encyclopedia which calls them 'beshiung-chin'. I don't know what chinese character is 'Chin' (it might be a transliteration of 'chen', but there are EIGHTY-FOUR 'chen's that my searches have found and I have no idea which one they mean.). All of the animals in the book have names, so maybe this guy is just called 'White-bear Chen'? A fine name!

There's instructions for assembling each project, material pattern layouts (drawn on a grid for you to copy at a magnification of your choosing) and full colour, meaningless and complex illustrations throughout!

I think sewing instructions are written in a secret code known only to the witchiest witches because sometimes they just make no sense. Also they seem to assume all kinds of things that aren't readily apparent (and would have been if they'd taken the time to label each point on the diagrams instead of leaving me to assume!).

As it happens, I recently met somebody at a con that's a big fan of pandas and has a birthday coming up... and I've got a big mangled cardboard box of unused black and white fleece fabric I was going to make a dragon's head out of but never got round to...

It's panda time!





I am sad.



I am happy again!

I've never embroidered anything before and I seriously hope to never have to again! My large needles were too big to go through the layers and my small needles were too small to take the thread or to go through the nose. My stitching is all uneven, and the squishy nose was changing shape as I stitched against it. It's a miracle the nose looks as good as it does! The mouth on the other hand* looks absolutely fantastic and I'm so happy that it turned out straight and taut and lovely. I don't know how long it'll last (I'm incredible surprised my ladder stitch on his belly to keep the fluff in held overnight without spontaneously popping.) I didn't know what thread to use either so I used some chunky 'star thread' from a set my sister bought me for christmas. I think it was the right stuff...? No idea.

Any and all embroidery advice gratefully received!

At least with these stitches in place for the nose, the structure of the snout is going to be a lot firmer so I could just do a second layer of stitching over the top of this to make it superneat... but for my first go I'm totally giving this guy an A-. Even if he does look weird and skinny because his eyes are huge and bulgy and his stuffing didn't want to stay inside his head and I only had fleece instead of fur...

(*I don't have a mouth on either hand that would be gross)

Check out all my pictures at:

http://www.mrdictionary.net/stuff/2017/panda/

I totally recommend this book to anyone who is willing to put up with the general obtuseness of sewing patterns in order to make some fluffy little ocelot kitten teddies and send them to me!

Brilliant. Well done.

awesome.

I think that's brilliant

Amazing.

Now can you make me a Trico plushy? Fankcoo.

I don't know who Trico is :( Is he similar to Treelo from Bear & The Big Blue House?

That is pretty cool.

I'm seriously impressed by the effort you've put into not just that awesome panda, but also the post you've written about it.

Mr D all of this is amazing! I want to have a go at the polar bear!

That's a wonderful, winderful piece of sewing, Mr D! I've made a few soft toys over the years (a really realistic badger, and a pig that was about 3ft long and almost spherical, with a little zippered pouch that held three piglets amongst other things...) but that's a pretty advanced pattern to have started with (not least because the black/white patterning of the panda's markings necessitate extra piece-joining than if it had been (say) a brown bear.

I absolutely love the process pics and descriptions. Such an interesting skill! Embroidery of features can be made simpler/more difficult depending on three factors (fabric, yarn and needle). An embroidery thread or floss such as the little skeins of anchor thread that have six strands are cheap, colour-fast and have the added benefit of being able to divide into one, two... up to six threads so you can make your working thread thicker or finer as you need. I can't tell the type of fleece fabric you have there, but it looks like s relatively tight weave with integrated piles, which can be difficult to get your needle into. A sharp embroidery needle with three strands of floss would give a smooth finish but require more stitches. For thicker threads I like sashiko (Japanese embroidery) needles, but they are difficult to source. I bought a good few for my sashiko projects, though, so if you think you might be embroidering any more noses, give me a nod and I'll pop a pack in the post.

I'm going to try and come up with a pattern for a human head (sans features) like that of a wig stand to block hats, and it will likely use a lot of similar skills in the design (by which I mean a lot of small darts, though a lot of the pandas will have been disguised by the joins.

The good thing is that the symbols in the patterns you use will be pretty much universal between pattern publishers, so the voodoo code just starts to make sense.

I'm going to look that book up

By the way, the fleece you've used there looks similar to what I often use. If you happen to live near an IKEA, just keep an eye on their £3 fleece blankets/throws. They regularly change up the colours, there's a good pile on the weave and it doesn't bobble as much as s lot of other fleece fabrics, and at the equivalent of about £2 per metre is perhaps the cheapest youll ever see.

niche title

The book was only £2.80 on eBay so I've bought a copy.

Brave title.

Awesome.

I like pandas. They lie around all day, eat the wrong things, and fail to get laid. I can identify with some of that.

Oh, and if you ARE near an IKEA then their cheapest (£1.20) pillows are the cheapest source of polyfill stuffing I know. You may have to tease a few bits apart, but it's generally great.

I found pics of the badger I made. He's not as realistic looking as I remembered in my head

These posts are all kind of awesome and have cheered me up no end.

That badger is fabulous Mimi! :D It's like the anti-panda, with its chunky round back feet and bladed front feet. Thanks for the advice about the stuffing and stuff.

I live super close to a few branches of Abakhan and a Calico Laine, which is where I get most of my stuff. The towns around here all have stinky cheap markets with useful upholstery stores too. I don't remember how much the stuffing was, but I think it was £5 for a 450g bag perhaps? I don't know whether that's good or not. It took an entire bag to fill my dragon tail.

This fleece was from myfabrics.com, I bought a bunch of their 1m remnants for mouth and jaw details on toys/puppets/costumes. I've got no problem with the pattern itself (my dragon suit was a McCalls 6106), it's just that the book's instructions are so terse they read like hip-hop tweet raps.

https://twitter.com/SkullKidUK/status/7 ... 6877606912

"Come on, let me see you shake your tail feather!"
No feathers, Ray! This do?#dragon #fursuit #onesie #sewing #tail pic.twitter.com/apcS45SBQW

— Skull Kid (@SkullKidUK) September 13, 2016

https://twitter.com/SkullKidUK/status/7 ... 0420130817

You know I think this sewing machine just doesn't have enough tails in it.#sewing #costume #dragon #tail pic.twitter.com/HC3hf2UAUX

— Skull Kid (@SkullKidUK) September 12, 2016

https://twitter.com/SkullKidUK/status/7 ... 9498742784

Current mood: excited!#dragon #fursuit #cosplay #costume #sewing #dinosaur #scalie #roar #tail #crafts #dragons pic.twitter.com/TrLdIcPCus

— Skull Kid (@SkullKidUK) September 11, 2016

If anybody would like to play along at home, here's what you've got to work from for the panda:
http://imgur.com/a/0YrZP
The grid should be magnified to 5cm squares (or bigger if you'd like a bigger panda!)... sorry there's a little bit of distortion on the far left side of those images but I think I've straightened the images out. The head gusset, muzzle, ears, tail and soles should be symmetrical. The back, legs, side head, underbody and eyepatch shouldn't be. (G to point should be slightly longer than H to point I believe.)

Jasmine, are you going to try this panda but totally white for your polar bear? Or do you mean the white guy on the far right of the page with the panda on? Or the teddy beside the dragon, but done in white?

I can take pics of any of the other patterns if you'd like to try them. :) I ought to make myself a proper digitising cradle and preserve this book!

Nooooooo! I love Abakhan, though we are a long distance from any to visit. I went with Jazzy, Russell and Joans once, it was glorious.

I think the older a book the fewer the instructions in both sewingvabd knitting. There is probably some degree of economy of print space, but I think it's mostly assumed knowledge. I have knitting books from the 30s and 40s that explain in two or three words what a modern knitting pattern would take half a page to communicate. In the 30s and 40s it was expected that women could knit and sew, and this was passed from generation to generation as an expected skill, taught at schools, etc. So stitches were known, and how to apply them also. Even in the books I have from the 80s it's expected that you know how to knit to a fairly good standard, but now the information in modern books is simplified and expanded, and every marking and instruction explained as often we haven't been taught these skills and are teaching ourselves. It's just amazing g that this is your first soft toy, though obviously you have a wealth of skill behind you due to your costume work. Was that all self-taught also? There's so much accumulated knowledge in the things you make. I'm in awe. Is modroc what I'm thinking of? (Plaster soaked bandages, almost?)

Your panda is wonderful. Do you know what you might make next? I love his blue safety eyes and his smile, they really bring him to life!

I've got a couple of massive (2") pairs of solid black safety eyes. I think I may use one pair to make a colossal squid.

We definitely have room for this as a decoration in Darwin's room. I can mount him up on the wall to be taken down to play with.

Totally not cool to mount your kid on the wall just to make room for a toy squid.

I live next to three... To tell the truth the Liverpool one used to have a lot more in it ten years ago, they closed off some of the space on the upper floor and seem to have reduced their fabric choice steadily since then. Birkenhead and Chester are pretty similar in terms of choice. Good for habadashery, but it's pot luck whether they'll have anything similar to the material you want.


Guesswork and just forcing things into the machine until it broke. :)

Having a super creative and awesome sister for inspiration and advice is great too!


Plaster soaked bandages, exactly! Dunk it in warm water, 'manipulate it' a little bit, and lay it in thin layers. In retrospect, possibly a bad choice for my mask, but it is lasting well.

I'm writing a whole bunch of stuff about how I made the Skull Kid get-up, but sometimes writing doesn't come so easy.


I had real trouble with the smile, it took a few goes before I found a sequence of stitches that lay straight and sucked in the stuffing in a pleasant way. I yelled in triumph when I tugged the stitches taut and they actually lay on top of each other properly instead of having one set sagging loose. I have no idea how to lock these threads in place so I just backstitched all inside the nose a lot and hoped that nothing would ping out in time.


Get another pair and make a big fluffy spider!

Efficient though.

I think you should sew them on Russell.

I'm back! And I've got more books!



I got this book from amazon on a recommendation while searching for more information on Pamela Peake's book.



By sheer coincidence, more pandas! But that's not the book I'm going to be talking about tonight.

Nor is it these two fellows I checked out the library on Monday:

The narrow book has got lots of wonderful guys in that I'd love to make, and the other Pamela Peake book has got a big mixture of things in it. The first quarter is toys, mostly baby stuff (the same clutch toys as in the other book mostly sadly), then it moves onto more dolls, then woodworking! and then how to make miniature furniture for dolls houses.

Instead, I'm going to show you this book I found for £1:


It's The Blackberry Hollow Cuddly Toy Book by Valerie Janitch.

You've got to have some gusto to make your own whole new childrens soft toy, puppet TV-show animal gang, and utmost confidence in your own creations. Somehow the book seems humble at the same time, full of simple charm and innocent delight, without ever, ever trying to 'sell' the characters in any kind of off-putting way.

More double-page photo spreads!





The instructions seem a lot clearer and prosaic than Peake's book even though the characters a lot simpler, but I haven't tried making any of the characters yet. I only have long pile orange fur to hand, so I could perhaps do some ginger hedgehogs?

The patterns aren't gridded this time, which is a real bother for me.



I imagine you're supposed to trace them, or lay a piece of gridded tracing paper over the top. I doubt the previous owner has done either since this book is absolutely pristine. And I can't blame them, because it's so fantastically lush and pleasant to read and hold and look at.

For example: it has short stories for each of the characters, so you can read out the little tales of all the characters once you've made them!



I can't fathom how somebody could assemble such an honest and personable book as this. The kind of book where the author's postal address is in the front in case you'd like to chat about soft toys. It's magic is what it is.

But it's not entirely twee, it's also a bit mercenary, with the inside cover promising "If you're already a dedicated toymaker, you'll discover a wealth of original new designs for toys and mascots: quick to make - and quick to sell, too!". A little bit of reality to poke the adults awake, and reassure them that these aren't just nice toys, they're great toys.

Oh, that book looks wonderful, do show us what you make!

I'm still waiting on delivery of my copy of the first book. I contacted the seller yesterday and they've replied this morning saying if it isn't with me by February 1st (which is today) to contact them for replacement (they seem to be a book reseller as they gave numerous copies).

Could you either use the long pile orange fur for a squirrel tail and trim it for the body (do I remember seeing you got clippers to trim haberdashery fur?). A ginger hedgehog sounds cute, though

Yup I got clippers to neaten up the face on my cat head, and I also had the brainwave of using it to trim it to a light fuzz to make the paw gloves for the guy as well.

They look ace! So professional. Did you dye the spots as well?

You should definitely make a ginger squirrel. It could be Grim... and Craster's mascot

Thanks! They're just a simple two-layer back to back glove. Miraculously, my first tracing + sewing attempt worked perfectly!

I was nervous about making them since I don't have a good track record with gloves. But I had some inspiration when making tea and felt like a silly dilly for not trying it this way first. Usually I screw up gloves by making the fingers too small or the wrist to narrow to get my curled hand in. And that's usually because once you cut out a glove-shaped piece of fabric, it's a real pain in the behind to keep things from flapping about when you sew right to the edge...

But if you're just doing two layers... you sew first and it's dead easy and you can worry about cutting when you're done!

http://imgur.com/jb21psD
http://imgur.com/DjrKoaV

The spots are drybrushed ( http://matrices.tumblr.com/post/1399549 ... o-faux-fur ) - neat acyrlic paint applied very very lightly and then brushed with stiff bristles to separate the fibers.

What's a good cheap material for testing out new patterns on?

Somebody's asked me to make a custom toy based on some pictures and I think I can do it but I want to try my patterns out on something cheap first. Is there some material I can ask for in the shop that's super cheap and basic that's used for trying stuff out? There must be something like that. :s

It's probably a case of finding a fabric that has similar properties to what you will be making the toy with. But for cheap fabric for Mock up purposes you can always buy old bedding from car boots or charity shops.

I'll grab Mimi and ask but I think that there's a material called Calico which is a cheap fabric, or you can look for the £2.99 fleece blankets in IKEA and chop those up. Otherwise, your local haberdasher might be like ours and have an offcuts bucket where they sell all the ends of rolls in parcels for very cheap.

Both the answers previous are pretty much bang on. If you are looking to make a maquette just for the purposes of making sure that the pieces fit together correctly in your pattern draft, simple calico will fit the bill fine (as will sheeting. Second hand is free, though to buy calico is a lot cheaper than actual sheeting fabric). Ikea, for example, sell a light calico at £2 per yard. It's probably called something silly, but it's basically an unbleached, undyed cotton.

If you are trying to ensure your finished form will work with your chosen fabric, it's really only that fabric or similar that will demonstrate this. Assuming it is for checking of the pattern draft, go for the calico.

Thanks a lot, i'll try to find some of that. :)

After I posted pictures of my panda online, somebody asked me if I could make a toy based on Pabu from the cartoon The Legend of Korra.

http://avatarthelastairbenderonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Korra-Art-Book-3.png

I've never seen the cartoon and don't know jack about Pabu or how to design my own toys (the only toy I've ever made is the panda and she was just copied from a book). But y'know, why the heck not?

First up: You've got to find lots and lots of pictures. And then you've got to draw lots and lots of pictures.



He's got three bits. A head, a body, and a tail, and four legs. Four bits.

Let's start with the body! It's basically just a tube, right? I'll sketch out the profile of it, and then come up with appropriate gusset pieces, matching the top length of the side to the side length of the top. The tail can be a trapezoid with a semicircular end. Sew a pair of them together and it'll squish out to a nice big raccoony tail!



How am I going to do his head? I originally planned on tracking down some esoteric Chinese software for making soft toy patterns that floated around a few years ago, but instead of losing myself completely down that vortex, I decided to do what I did for the cat head I made and make a foam form and take the pattern from the tape of it. The shape of Pabu's head is not spherical but with a slightly pudgier lower half and pointed cheeks. He's got a little snouto too.



The original tape design I took off the foam was too small to fit onto the body I'd made... I had to trace out all the shapes onto dense graph paper and blow them up* to get them the right size.**

(* I saw 'Honey I Blew Up The Kid' at the cinema when I was really young. Can you imagine my disappointment when they used the phrase 'Blew Up' to refer to it getting bigger? What kind of absolute square uses that phrase in common conversation.)

But how am I going to do his face? I can't incorporate it into the pattern since it'll be way too fiddly. I'm going to have to applique it on... but I don't know how to do that! Aaahhhh....!

But then a heroic Mimi saved the day by telling me exactly what I ought to do to make it look nice like other folks' Pabus. The mysterious overcast stitch - looks absolutely terrible in diagrams, but when you do it for applique you get a slightly notched-looking finish which lasts! To keep the pieces in place, I used iron-on web (Bondaweb).



And after fussing for a week or so trying to get the correct eyes (since my local shops doesn't have the right eyes or the right noses, in any of their many branches) I finally got 'em. All I needed to do to fit them was gouge a big hole through three layers of felt and two layers of glue. First pins, then miniature screwdrivers, then larger screwdrivers. Right through the eye. Poor guy.



Making cuddlies is a very exacting, very technical engineering challenge! Proper planning and pattern pinning prevents probable plushie production problems. Though I tend to use masking tape to keep the patterns on the fabric 'cause the pins tend to rumple everything up. Making the tail was as laborious as it looks...

** And now his head is slightly too big for his body since I blew it up. I had to put in a sneaky dart or two into the head gusset and chin to get the head to fit onto the body. This is what happens when you diddle with things! I think I got away with it.



With the head, tail and face all sewn, I can finally stuff the guy and then move on to getting his legs looking right.

How many cushions worth of stuffing does it take to fill up a Pabu? Just under three of Wilkinson's' finest £1.50 half-metre-square cushion bases!



And then some legs. The front pair are just two halves sewn together. The back pair have a gusset to chunk them up. Hand sewing them all shut after stuffing was a chore, but miraculously I seem to be getting better (or at least luckier) with my sewing. Not an embarassment at all.



And he's done! Hooray! ^_^ He is Pableu, Pabu's mysterious twin. Not a Fire Ferret, but an Ice Weasel. Simply because I got a metre of navy fleece from Calico for a pound, and the dark blue was thrown in for free.



Pableu and Hotshot('s severed head), best of pals. Taking up table space and being annoying 'cause I have nowhere else to put 'em.

http://www.mrdictionary.net/stuff/2017/pableu/

Thank you Mimi.

That's superb. You've found your calling!

Absolutely fantastic! Well done.

yeah, that's great stuff.

Pableau is an absolute triumph, Mr D. You clearly have amazing skills in being able to think in 3D, apply that to your chosen materials and then the handiwork skills to make an excellent job of the physical project, and I definitely deserve no thanks as your skills there far surpass what I could have done. Thank YOU for the excellent write up and pictures of your process. Very inspirational. Really hoping to see more in the future!

Superb.

You're very talented, MrD - great work!

Thanks everyone :D Here's some videos I made along the way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRhgPVCwpas

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0ZGHCHHZGo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pgYPx8zLMs

Now I've gotta see if I can convince the guy to give me a million quid to make him a proper Pabu now I have a Pabu-rototype to show. :)

I made a lion! (No really I'm telling the truth!)

http://imgur.com/a/VfgzV

Oh, he's amazing! Where is he (or, rather, his pattern) from? Is if a published pattern or have you been drafting again?

I picked up this book from The Works on Monday. The toys inside are quite traditional. Mostly dolls in the first section and a few other traditional style toys in the second section, but they are all very charming. Plus, it has long and detailed section about how to properly make and attach various forms and styles of hair, how to embroider eyes and faces most effectively, etc. All of the pattern pieces are provided in full scale on a fold-out section for tracing, too.

He is Leo the Laughing Lion from Cuddly Toys and Dolls by Jean Greenhowe. My guy is called Sunny, 'cause how could you not be cheered up by that face!

http://www.mrdictionary.net/stuff/2017/lion/

Leo and the ladybird are the only two 'sit on' toys in the book sadly. When I first saw him in the book, I was most curious about how they got the neat face and paw lines. They're bootlaces. :)

He's absolutely gigantic, he's got at least ten of wilkinson's large cushion's stuffings inside of him. The mane was a pain to put on, I put it off for over a month while I made a new Majora's Mask because I didn't think I had the dexterity needed to sew it on. And after I'd done it and put the face on, I put on a second layer of mane so it looked right!

Seriously, I think authors make their instructions vague on purpose...

I have no idea where to put him. Him and Pableu take up an entire shelf between them.

I've just written a couple of billion words on this guy



if you're at all curious :)

https://www.mrdictionary.net/cosplay/hotshot.htm

Too many cooks! Too many cooks!

That was an incredible read, and there was so much stuff I'd never considered, like the way you had to clip the fur back. And that was before you made all the accessories and patches. Great read, and a great make.

Enjoyed reading that.
Very curious about cosplay because it's not something I've done but is probably similar to one of my interests. When you're 'being' Hotshot, do you play a role and adopt certain ways of moving and interacting with others?