Posted by bzedan on Jan 27, 2022
A big theme among a lot of gifts I and others gave this year was just asking "do you want this thing?" or "what do you want?" My best friend got a daybed and had put some stuffed animals on it, so I asked if I could make them a stuffed animal since she is not someone who collects plushes and had to consider their Zoom visibility in meetings. She said yes right away then corrected, "I mean no you cannot make me a stuffed animal but yes you can make me a friend." Imagine many heart/sob/big eye emojis from us both.
I knew right away I wanted to make them a minotaur pal because she and I share a bit of an obsession. After a little thinking about the form (does one make more of a modern sculpted plushie, or go more traditional) I settled on the classic teddy bear shape; bean-shaped body, separate arms and legs, and comfortably under 18 inches high. The pattern was freehanded from looking at some image results of traditional teddy bear patterns then thinking about the shape of cow heads. Someday maybe I'll explain how I draft patterns but honestly, it always works out and I don't want to look at why it does too closely.
In the continued habit of not buying what I don't have to, I already had the perfect faux fur for a slightly shaggy cow, thanks to scraps from a costume I made her cat almost ten years ago, lots of fleece from making puppets and a whole shitload of thin black faux leather I do not remember buying but okay. All that I ended up needing to pick up were some larger plain black eyes since what I have on hand is smaller or giant owl eyes leftover from building an owlbear puppet last year.
It was a pretty straightforward build. If you've ever sewn stuffed animals it's a soothing process, with most of the frustration stacked into just turning bits the right way out and stuffing things evenly. On that note, if you sew, holy moley I have found the best polyfill for stuffed animals. Poly-Fil Crafter's Choice Dry Packing Fiber Fill (link goes to Joann Fabrics, where I picked it up) is a "dry" and coarse texture that honestly reminds me of what I've seen of excelsior/wood wool. It packs well, from looser to well-stuffed, without the slipping around and clumping that regular stuffing is prone to. Anyway, now pictures.
And that's the other big thing that took up my December. As I'm writing this I've still a lot of January to go (love you, queue), and therefore some more thinks to think about how I want to approach creating and blogging this year, so hopefully the month will fill up with more posts about other things.
Thank you as always for your support!
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