Now, this blog is called Adventures in Creativity, not Adventures in Anime, so I’ll forgo explaining his character and his show. I’ll just let that introduction suffice.*
*Vash is the hero and a good guy, but also an outlaw, so he's a little hesitant sometimes to throw around his name.
Who I really wanted you to meet, though, is this guy.
I finished him up just a couple days after my last blog post, but I was slow to post him on here because I’ve been really busy... busy being lazy I mean. So, what I’d like to talk about is how he was made, and tips I’ve learned in plushy-making, so that other’s can take a stab at it if they like.
(Please note that these are tips for first time plushy makers, not first time sewers. If you want to try this out, it helps to already know how to work a sewing machine and basic stitches and that sort of thing. If anyone asks, I’ll do a post later about what basic sewing skills are good to know.)
Vash is 24" tall. (Although if he didn’t have that crazy hair, he’d be more like 20-22 or so.) I wanted to make him that size because there are, actually, already Vash plushies out there that you can buy, but they’re about a foot tall, and I’ve found that’s just not too good a size for proper hugging. Closer to two feet get’s you a bigger, floppier, more huggable plush, and that’s what I really wanted. (Also, if a plushy is that big, you get to do most of the work on a sewing machine! *thumbs up*) The official Vash plushes look like this, by the way:
Plushy making tip # 1: Build the body, then build clothes to go on it. That may sound like more work, but trust me, it’s so much easier!
That said, let’s start with the body and go from there. This is what Vash looks like without his coat. (You’ll have to excuse the fake hair. He just looked too ridiculous bald.)
He’s made from cotton, although the head is actually some lightweight denim that I happened to have on me, so I used it. (It’s actually left over from a coat I made as part of a costume.) The body is a pretty simple pattern, and I stole a lot of it from my favorite teddy bear by measuring his limbs and seems. The head, however, is more complex, and credit for that doesn’t even go to me. A fellow plushy-maker called AshFantastic (ashfantastic.deviantart.com) created the pattern and posted it online for others to use. He’s button jointed, which means his limbs are separate pieces buttoned onto the body. This makes his limbs move really well, and, I think, makes him a little easier to make. (I just had to think about placement of buttons and button-holes, which isn’t hard, rather than how to actually sew the limbs onto the body.)
Plushy making tip # 2: Use iron-on printer paper for the eyes. You don’t have to, but it’s sure easy, and less intimidating than the idea of drawing/painting them on yourself. You can pick up this stuff at Wal-Mart, put it in your printer, print out some eyes, and then iron them onto the face. For Vash’s eyes, I found a screen shot from the show, cropped the eyes, printed, and ironed.
Tip #2.2: If you’re choosing between paper for light fabric or dark fabric, here’s the difference. Paper for light fabric assumes the fabric is white, and so the paper itself is clear. Anything without ink when printed will be clear when ironed on. I used light fabric paper on Vash, and you can see how the whites of his eyes aren’t too white. The eye whites printed mostly clear and so you can see the fabric showing through beneath it. However, this does have the pro that, when cutting out the paper to iron it on, you can leave a margin around the image, because that margin will be clear and not noticeable. Paper for dark fabric is white, so that anything that doesn’t get ink when printed really will be white on the fabric. Pro: eye whites will be truly white. Con: you can’t leave a margin around the eyes or else you have big white blobs circling the eyes.
Plushy making tip #3: Felt is your friend. It doesn’t fray, so it doesn’t have to be hemmed. This makes it a popular choice for hair, which is what I’ve done. I also used it for the buttons, so that I could have soft buttons, but wouldn’t have to hem up a million little tiny circles.
For the hair, by the way, I had to come up with a way to give Vash his broom-head hair. (And I’ve heard rumor that the official Vash plush is secretly bald if you look straight down at his head.) So to get the broom-head without leaving him bald, I made a cylinder out of the felt for his hair and sewed it onto the top of his head and stuffed it. Then I made a front piece and back piece and glued them onto the head and cylinder.
Plushy making tip #4: Fabric glue is also your friend. When I first tried out plushy making, I felt like glue was cheating. Glue was for people who couldn’t sew. I was so wrong. Use needle and thread for seems and hems and all that good stuff, but glue is for details and accessories. And ribbons. Definitely ribbons. All ribbons on him are glued on, as are the buttons and the outer hair (not the hair’s cylinder).
And while we’re on the subject of gluing on accessories, the studs on his shin guards are iron-on nail heads by a company called Glamour Glitz. They’re just little metal circles with iron-on glue on the backs of them. Because the legs were already stuffed when I went to attach the nail heads, I just glued them on with fabric glue.
And on to the coat! (Oh, that coat!) I was intimidated by it the whole time leading up to it, and was braced for a lot of trouble, but it turned out to be a rather well-behaved coat. I was lucky enough to find the model sheet for the character, which helped tremendously. (A model sheet is a page showing the character from all sides and shows different facial expressions and details. The animators use this as a reference so that no matter who’s drawing the character, everyone draws him the same way.)
I’m not really sure what else to say about the coat. I think things I’ve said before cover most of it. By the way, the coat is removable, and the process goes like this:
Plushy making tip #5: Plushies are not meant to have necks, but this one does so that there was room for the collar. The reason why plushies should be neck-less is that, if they have a neck, their heads flop around like crazy. They won’t stay up. To compensate, that collar is four layers of fabric thick (which broke my sewing machine needle, by the way, which, in turn, gave me a heart attack). Plus, it overlaps in the front, so that’s eight layers. His head rests on the collar rather than lolling around.
Plushy making tip #6: Paper towels are good pattern making material. At first, Vash’s coat looked like this:
I designed the pattern by taking a pretty good guess at how a piece would go, cutting it out of paper towels, and then taping and pinning the pieces onto Vash. If something wasn’t right, I cut out a new piece and tried it on for size. I think building the pattern for the coat took as long as making the coat itself.
A further note on this: this is a method I came up with myself. I don’t know how other people do it. If anyone has any other suggestions, please let me know. Actually, if anyone has any suggestions on ANY of this, let me know.
Okay, that's about it. I'll see you guys next time!
Vash
ReplyDelete