Building Character

I have to confess, when I purchased Abby Glassenberg’s book, Stuffed Animals: From Concept to Construction, part of me was thinking, “I’m not REALLY interested in designing my own stuffed animals, but I know the book includes at least a few patterns and projects I would like.” The second part is more than true … I think the only reason I haven’t completed any of them yet (the hippo is in progress) is because I can’t decide which to make. But, what has surprised me is how often I’ve already consulted this book for various projects. So maybe I more interested than I thought!

As I mentioned previously, I tried out a bunch of the various techniques for making round objects when I made the golden snitch and bludgers for my Harry Potter-themed gifts. I ended up using one of those techniques again to make my son a stuffed “Minion” from the Despicable Me 2 movie we saw earlier this summer. Really, I spent a ridiculous amount of time trying different methods to get a rounded head and bottom _ I didn’t want to just have two flat, rounded shapes sewn together, I wanted it to be three-dimensional. What finally worked was sewing three wedge-shaped pieces together to make sort of a dome shape, and then sewing that to the cylinder-shaped body. Of course, I then added a hat and covered up all that hard work!

Parker really wanted the “golfer” minion, so I found some fleece that had a bit of green plaid (it actually was a John Deere print with tractors and green plaid squares). The plaid pieces weren’t quite big enough so I had to piece them together, but overall, it worked. And Parker absolutely loves it.

I also did a bit of designing/improvising when my friend asked me to make a doll for her daughter’s sixth birthday. She had her heart set on a cuddly version of Aang, a character from Avatar: The Last Airbender, a show I’ve never seen. I didn’t want to start completely from scratch so I purchased Abby’s Liam doll pattern. I printed the pattern at 75 percent, and made the head more of an oval shape than round. In retrospect, I wish I had just kept the round head and minimalist look of the original rather than trying to exactly replicate the face from the cartoon. I made a few modifications to the body to add the stripes of orange, and for the legs, I gathered a wider piece of fleece to the lower leg to make the pants more closely resemble the picture. I love the technique for making the feet, very easy and very cute! (though with small pieces like that, I like to baste them together by hand rather than try to fit lots of pins along a small stretch of fabric).

I think the final result looks a bit like a Muppet!

I know I took pictures of the completed doll, but I can’t seem to find them. But here’s a picture I used as reference, and a picture of the final product with the happy recipient: