So I don't remember when or why I thought of it, but I got the idea that I could make anime plushies and sell them on Etsy. I decided to start with Spike Spiegel, since whoever owns the licensing rights to Cowboy Bebop doesn't make Spike plushies, and I figured that it would sell better than a character that you cold buy an official version of in a store, right? But the real reason is I wanted a Spike plushie, and since I couldn't buy one, I would just have to make one. Y'know, all the other kids are spending their gap years traveling the world and volunteering and living it up, and meanwhile I'm turning into a weird reclusive doll maker. But moving on. I bought a bunch of felt and sewing material and stuffing and spent last few days up in my room sewing, and the end result was this.
Yeah, turns out when you try to make a huggy, chibi version of a character who looks like this, the end result is kind of disturbing. I'm beginning to understand why there aren't any Spike plushies on Amazon. Plus, the fact that I'm a terrible sewer and didn't take time to plan out the design didn't really help. You can't see it so much in the picture, but there are a lot of parts in the back that look like a caveman sewed them. I couldn't sell this because it would fall apart within weeks. Anyway, it looks bad.
I'm disappointed that I didn't get my cute Spike plushie, but I'm trying to think of this as a learning experience, and I definitely learned a lot.
1) A sewing machine would be really really helpful.
2) Slightly nicer fabric than felt is probably a worthwhile investment. Felt is itchy, it doesn't stretch, and it's always shedding. Plus it's all fuzzy so it's pretty much impossible to paint on.
3) Apparently fabric glue doesn't hold felt to felt, which means I wasted four dollars.
4) DON'T WING IT. Seriously, when am I gonna learn this one? Half the mistakes on this doll were because I didn't decide beforehand how to do things or what materials to use or how I wanted it to look, and I had to go back and try to salvage my mistakes. See that weird gray smudge around the nose? I painted on the face and let it dry and everything. Then I decided I didn't like the face, so I tried to pick all the dried paint off the felt, and eventually I had gone through like a layer of felt and the stuffing on the inside was starting to show, and the cloth was still kinda gray. So yeah.
5) Well, I'm really not terrible at making plushies. I made mistakes, sure, but they're mistakes that I can grow out of. This is something I can do, and i like it. I'm already thinking about what characters to do next.
This is the tutorial I used for the base doll. I modified it a bit to make it smaller (mostly because I didn't have that much cloth to work with), and also I made a lot of silly mistakes, but whatever.
