batiferrite | Entries tagged with fandom: pokemon

I kind of took a month-long break in the middle there, but here he is, at last!

Production Notes

You know how last time I mentioned that the most stressful part was making and aligning the limbs? Promptly went and made something with six of the fiddly things to deal with! I also sewed each of the little blue felt stripes to his legs, which wasn't like that bad, but also made me put off finishing him for even longer...
Once I got all the accents sewn on, I went around and used a felting needle to make sure it was secure and stayed down nicely -- I think that really made a difference compared to previous pieces.
Yeah, this guy was pretty straightforward so I don't really have much to say, but, when all has been said and done, it does just make me really happy to look at him!

Also, I took the previous two to my aunt's house when we played Euchre last and everyone loved them! She also confirmed that they are, in fact, intended to be Christmas presents, so (since I'm not sure if I'd be able to make another whole plush before Christmas) I made a little ornament to go with them:

I've always really admired this 2D felt aesthetic, but I've never actually tried it before and kinda just jumped into it... and made a lot of mistakes / questionable decisions along the way. I also didn't really think about the logistics of connecting all these pieces, so I ended up just sewing them together in the jankiest way possible and reinforced the connection a bit with a felting needle, lol. Much more research and / or experimenting required...

Anyway, if I don't end up posting again before then, hope everyone has a great holiday season! ^^

Current Mood: artistic

Oh, I'm seriously so happy with how he came out!!

Production Notes:

I've been watching a bunch of tutorials to learn different techniques and approaches. Like, here, the body is made is the same way as this video by Sugar Maple Crafts. I didn't quite make the front legs long enough / sew them down far enough, but he still sits nicely, so I guess it's fine. (...if it really bothers me, I might making some little paws and sew them on.) Still, it really is so much easier to make the body like this, with the torso and limbs in one piece, compared to sewing them together separately! That was, like, 90% of the anxiety I had with previous plushes, trying to get everything positioned and aligned properly, and taking it all apart when things were off.
For the black parts: the sock elastic really came in handy for making his pants! Just put it around and sewed up the inseam. The main mass of black on his head was done in a similar-ish way, taking a blue ball and wrapping it with black fabric, then cutting out the shape of his little masky-thing. The tufts of fur immediately under his ears were little cones that I needlefelted, then sewed onto the blue fabric before putting the black over it, and I think that worked well enough, but then I realized I could use the foam interfacing to make more distinctive shapes. (Also, it's really hard to try to make marks on black fabric! I started by trying to pin a stencil to the fabric, but it kept moving around. A white soft pastel works decently, but isn't very exact.)
I was worrying so much about how to make the tail and kept putting it off because of that, but I think the solution I came up with works well! The black part of the tail is a pipe cleaner, doubled up and twisted together for a bit of extra thickness / strength, and attached it like this:

With how stretchy the fabric is, it's a little annoying trying to embroider fine details like the face. I finally just gave up and needlefelted the dark lines above his eyes because my thread didn't want to cooperate....

To be honest, I am kinda worried about how secure some of these things are. Again, I'm just not really familiar with children and how rough they / what they want from a toy, exactly. Hopefully, it'll work out...

Anyway! Still undecided on what else to make, but I'm kinda leaning towards Natu or Spinarak, maybe? I'm still trying to go for a variety of body silhouettes and main colors, while still looking nice together (also, I just think they're very cute, in general!).

Current Mood: artistic

If you missed the bit where I mentioned this in the last entry: I was asked to make 3-4 Pokemon plushies for one of my cousins. Here's the first little fellow! He's not perfect or anything, but I'm rather fond of him. ^^

A Pikachu plush on a patterned background.

Back view of a Pikachu plush on a patterned background.

Production Notes:

Some notes for anyone who might want to make sock plushies of their own: turns out, it's surprisingly difficult to find suitable fuzzy socks online, actually! Most of them come with stripey patterns or little faces printed on them or something, and not really that many listings for plain colors. Another thing is that (and maybe I just got ridiculously cheap socks or something...), they're very loosely woven, so if you try to tie a knot at the end of your thread like you'd normally use for sewing, it'll just come right through -- not good! I found that it's better to try and make a little cross-stitch or something to that effect to anchor your thread around a piece of the fabric itself, rather than just relying on a knot, if that makes sense.

Other things I've learned / changed since the Clefairy plush back in April:

The eyes are glued on again, but I bought actual fabric glue rather than just using tacky glue. It seems to work better. (I sewed on all the other little felt bits, but I'd have to change the thread color several times when sewing the eyes and that just seems like such a pain...)
Should put the weight beads in the next one, so it can sit properly...
Actually learned how to ladder stitch! For the Clefairy, I ended up whip stitching all her limbs on because I didn't really understand the difference, oops.
His tail is stuffed with foam flexible interfacing cut into shape, like you'd use for making a stiff quilted bag. It holds its shape really well and adds just a bit of uniform thickness, but not too much. I think that's the best solution for little flat details like that!
Also, I drew out the arms and tail on paper and traced it onto the sock with a fabric marker rather than trying to roughly eyeball it, and, wow, that really makes your life easier!

Notes for the future:

I ultimately decided against this since it's a present for a kid, but I still think it's a really cute idea to put little magnets in a plushie's hands so they can hold stuff! Like I was thinking about making a ketchup bottle or a custom box to put another little gift in with a washer embedded in it or something, but I was worried about how safe that would be.
I also think it'd be really cute to make him some little (removable) accessories, like a Santa hat or a needlefelted birthday cake (like the card). I really need to ask what occasion these are for...
I should also really research / practice making more defined, sharp lines in sewing. The tail didn't really come out as zigzaggy as I wanted it..

Besides that, I still haven't really decided what other Pokemon I should make for him. Like, I think the safe option would be to do the Kanto starters for a nice, cohesive set of mons, but that might be too safe, y'know? So I've been thinking about some Pokemon that

have a unique silhouette (within the set, at least),
have a fun color palette, likely bicolored with a few accents,
are visibly "Pokemon-y" (that is, not too reminiscent of a normal animal, but also not too out there, y'know?)

For some reason, my heart is telling me Luxio definitely needs to be one: he's just such a cute little angsty teenage lion boy! And maybe Jirachi...

Current Mood: artistic

Okay, so, my issue here is I keep alternatingly forgetting that Dreamwidth exists and then putting off posting until I finish whatever current project I'm working on... and then, by the time that I finish it, I forget about Dreamwidth again. And the cycle repeats...

Another reason I kinda stopped posting here was that a few months ago I was kinda blogging a lot on other sites as well, and I just thought that it tedious to basically write the same thing in multiple places. Now I've kinda slowed down with that for one reason or another, but I still wanted to ramble about arts & craftsy projects I'm working on... but that just brings us back to the cycle of not wanting to post here until I finish something. See my problem here? So, I'm just gonna start anyway.

But, first, I guess I should talk about the past couple of months:

Personally...

Last time, I mentioned going to therapy. Genuinely, I do think talking to someone and hearing from an outside perspective was helpful -- I've realized some things, but, ultimately, it comes down to: God, I really want to move out and be more independent. A lot of the therapy sessions were actually her reading over my resume and giving interview advice and stuff. And I've had a few interviews in the meantime, but still nothing has really come out of them yet, so that sucks. *sigh* I ended up cancelling the last meeting, though, and I don't know if I'll be going back.

Besides that, I've been leaving the house a bit more, at least. Volunteering with a local musical theater group in return for free tickets, playing Euchre with some relatives, and I've been eyeing a board game event at the library that I wanted to go to.

Art Fight 2024

This was my first time actually doing Art Fight despite hearing about it for several years and it was a lot of fun, drawing different sorts of characters and stuff that I normally wouldn't. I also think I've gotten better at improvising landscape backgrounds and general composition, so I'm pretty proud of that! Highlights below, but I also put all my Art Fight stuff on my site.

cw: mild nudity

needlefelting :3

cross stitch

[Ghastly and Gengar, as well as the cardinal patterns made by @butterberrycafe on Tumblr. Elephant pattern by goldflower on Braceletbook.]

Most recently, I've gotten into making little pins or magnets or whatever (I actually haven't finished them yet, oops). I was trying to do this as a replacement for scrolling mindlessly on Tumblr, and I think it's pretty satisfying! These were all done on plastic canvas, but I've been thinking about graduating up to a larger design and incorporating it into a box or bookbinding-thing. I made a little prototype to see how that would work, using some leftover scraps and perforated paper:

It all glued really nicely, so I think this would work out well! I thought it'd be cute to make, like, a little storage box for my old Gameboy maybe, with a cross stitch of some card art from the Pokemon Trading Card Game GBC on the top. That's on the backburner, though, because...

Currently...

I signed up for the PokéPod Project here on Dreamwidth. Basically the idea is people write or narrate a short story (or three, in my case) about an assigned Pokémon from the original 151, and they all come together in a cute little set. I don't think I'm allowed to say what I've been assigned yet, but I've been working on writing those. (The deadline's coming a little close, but I think it'll be fine!)
And also, my aunt suddenly said she'd pay me to make some more Pokémon sock plushies for one of my little cousins. He's like six and I've barely even met him. When I asked which Pokémon I should make, all she said was his favorite is Pikachu, but besides that, "he likes them all! ^^" which is, uh, kinda stressful. I've got some plans, though, that I'll write about once I get a bit further in!

And I think that's all I've got to say for now! Thanks for listening! ^^

Current Mood: artistic

Sorry I keep forgetting to post here, and also sorry for never responding to some older comments! I feel like at this point it''d be weird to go back and do so now...

Some Artsy Updates

I signed up for the Book Club Exchange -- it seemed like a cute idea to have everyone explore a mutually new fandom together and I ended up really loving the short story that was chosen for it! Can't wait to see what people come up with for it!

I, uh, didn't end up following through with the Ladies Bingo that I mentioned a few posts ago (which has still been like several months). I started a few things, but... I tend to feel really self-conscious about my writing and drive myself crazy, editing and rewriting and constantly worrying about whether something is good enough to post. With this exchange, though, I'd have a concrete deadline and I think writing something specifically for someone based off a list of prompts they like would be a bit easier than getting overwhelmed with infinite possibilities.

In regards to new artsy-craftsy projects from the past couple of months:

I've gotten really into soft pastels!

Some more needlefelting projects that I think turned out really well:

Also, a Clefairy plushie:

She's inspired by Maqaroon's sock plushie tutorials, which I've loved for over a decade now but only just now actually tried out. I don't really have much experience with sewing, so this was a fun challenge. I also bought a kinda wide assortment of sock colors, so I've been daydreaming about future projects (maybe Vileplume? or some kind of cockatiel? so many options...).

Mild Life Updates

I've kinda gotten obsessed with Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 on the Switch recently! I've never played a Puyo Puyo game before this and the adventure mode is kicking my ass (especially the skill battles and switch matches!), but it's been a lot of fun! I also finally shelled out for a Nintendo Online subscription, lol.

A bit more personal...

I also am, finally, legit going to go in for a mental health evaluation later this week. This combination of extreme, extreme low self-esteem, panic attacks (or whatever they are), perpetual exhaustion, neuroticism (?), etc has been really, significantly interfering with my life... I kinda do hope it goes like that one Tumblr post where just taking a certain vitamin will magically cure everything that's wrong with me and I'll be a functioning human being, but, more realistically, I hope I can at least learn some better coping skills to deal with all of this. I feel like I've been stuck in suspended animation since, like, the beginning of the pandemic (or maybe even before that), and I'm not sure how to break out this loop...

Thanks for listening! I'm gonna go catch up on my reading page, now! (or try to, at least...)

Current Mood: artistic

I haven't posted here in a while, huh? Here's a round up of a couple of things I've been working on!

A needle felted Kilala!
( pics & info )

Working on a HaruMichi shrine for my site! I've basically only got the homepage and a couple of doodles uploaded so far, though...

And just finished a submission for a contest from a forum I'm on! The theme was "haunted houses." (The contest is open until the 29th, btw, if you wanted to submit something :3 )

Altoid tins are smaller than I thought they were -- I was originally planning on adding a Chandelure and more furniture, but I think it'd just end up looking crowded.. I do definitely want to make more of these in the future, though!

And that's about it! ^^

Current Mood: artistic

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batiferrite

daughterofbilitis

April 2025

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Entries tagged with fandom: pokemon

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plushies: first up... pikachu!

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