Hi! Tiny Apples here! Welcome to Tiny Apple’s Sewing Blog! :-)
I’m super excited to start this blog-- I really love sewing, and I enjoy trying different sewing projects… and of course, I am very happy, excited, and proud to create cute plush friends-- So I decided to document my progress of making plushies and other small projects. This sewing blog will mainly cover sewing Plush toys/Plush friends (or plushies, as they’re often called)-- but I plan to occasionally post embroidery, clothing design sketches and ideas, knitting (?), and other little sewing projects in this blog as those are also things I also do from time to time!
Notice: I do NOT know how to sew my own clothes at this current moment in time-- I’m much more experienced with sewing 3-dimensional things like plushies-- But I really want to learn how to make clothes with a pattern and try making my own outfit someday! When I do, I’ll definitely post about it here. :-)
Also, I am planning on making and publishing patterns for some of my plush projects! Right now I’m just sort of sharing my progress and how my workflow goes. I will definitely upload patterns here when I make them.
Some background about me! I’m an art student, I go to school at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. [With the current pandemic (COVID-19), I’m doing my schoolwork remotely, but I think things will get better soon. I’m hopeful they will, anyway!]
I’m a (bi-curious) bisexual female. (I think… I’m still figuring myself out over time!) I have been sewing since I was very young, my first project was a long caterpillar-shaped pillow that looked like a rabbit, I used to call him “Bunny Bug”. :-) I think I still have that guy somewhere. As well as sewing, I love to draw cartoons and make comics. (I am in the cartooning major at my college after all!) I have a pretty big obsession with Soul Eater, and I really like to draw Soul and Death the Kid being happy together. I love Maka and Crona’s wholesome relationship. Also I have a cat at home named Steven, and he is a friendly cat who I love very much. (Though he is very vocal and makes a lot of sounds!) (But I still love him.)
So, today is a new day and I went for a long hike in the forest in the afternoon. It was peaceful. When I got back I decided to do some sewing, and I’m working on sewing a Crona plush. Here, I will show you my progress on making my little Crona plush.
I’m basing him (I usually like to think Crona is male, but feel free to label him/her/them anyway you want! I know Crona’s gender is different depending on the anime or the manga, or however you feel like, so yea!)-- off my Death the Kid plush I made a while back. Also, this is all a hand-sewn project, I don’t use the sewing machine for this. (Though I use the sewing machine for a lot of other projects.)
My little Death the Kid plushie!
To start, I have to rest my Kid plush down on a piece of paper and trace around his head, to get an approximate measurement of how big his head is. (It’s not exact, so next time I might use a measuring tape to measure the exact size.)
He’s going to sit with us while we work. :-)
Process of lightly sketching around his head.
Here’s the fabric I am going to be using. It’s minky fabric in cream/flesh tone, dark brown (which I will replace with black when I make these plushies in the future, dark brown is what I currently have), and lavender.
There are some other in-progress projects in the background.
So after I have the circle drawn on the paper, I cut it out and pin it to the fabric like so:
I try to label it for future reference.
I also must pin it the correct way so the wrong sides are facing inward. Then I thread my needle, tie a secure knot, and begin to sew!
Sewing is very calming and therapeutic for me, too.
After the head has been sewn, turned inside out, and stuffed, it looks like this:
A small head. First part is now complete and we can start planning and making his hair!
For making a plushie’s hair, I like to rest the head down on the fabric and then lightly sketch around it. I do the front and the back of the head, so I have to draw on the fabric twice to get both pieces planned out.
The back. The front.
Now I begin sewing the front piece of hair to the head. Sometimes I run out of thread, and when that happens, I simply thread a new needle and continue to work. Once the front of the hair is sewn to the front of the head, I proceed by sewing the back piece of the hair to the back of the head.
It will look something like this when it’s finished:
Front and back! It looks alright so far, I think!
Then, I cut out the eye shapes from a small piece of dark brown fabric. Pinning the two eye shapes onto the head is a little difficult, as the eyes are sort of small, but it’s do-able!
Eyes are pinned on. Now to sew the eyes to the head. He’s looking cute so far. :-)
Okay, so I took a short break from making this Crona plush to explore a technique to making my plushies more round and 3-dimensional. I’m definitely going to finish this Crona plush in the future, though!
Here’s what I came up with:
It’s sort of a diamond shape, or maybe I would describe it as an oval where the ends transition to a point. I cut four of these out on some lavender fabric. I sewed around one edge, starting with two and then going to the other two.
When the two of them were sewed at one edge, I brought the two together and started sewing them at the other edges pressed together. Keep in mind, I did this with ALL of the sides facing the wrong side out-- basically I kept the wrong side out and the good, plushy side I want shown on the inside. That way, when I turned it inside out to hide the seams, the result would show the good, plushy, pretty side of the fabric. (That’s what we want.) :-)
Once I did this, I stuffed it with stuffing, and I noticed that it was much more round and 3-dimensional. It was much more plump and round and looked like an actual sphere, instead of just a circle. So I’m going with this method in the future because it looks much more professional!
After stuffing it, I thought it had some potential to make a good plush. After all, I didn’t want to just waste the sphere I just made. I wanted to make it into something, so I began sewing small circles and turning them inside out, then adding some pink fabric to the center. I cut the pink fabric into a circle a bit smaller than the lavender small circles. Then I started attaching this to the top of the lavender sphere I made. I also cut two tiny holes into the sphere, and attached doll eyes. Later on I’m going to add a small drop of glue to the tiny holes where the doll eyes are pushed in, so it’s even more secure. I also cut a small red nose out of red felt, and attached it, as well as a white felt muzzle. I then began sewing a little mouth on it. It started looking more and more like a mouse!
I decided that I’m going to finish this, and make it a mouse. It’s going to be called a Pocket Mouse. As you can see in the background, I also started making a different Death the Kid plush using this same method. (Yes, he has a little red nose. I’m sorry…! :-0 I just think he looks cute that way! :-3 Also that’s how I draw and design my characters to look, anyway. That’s just my art style, I guess. It’s kinda different than the original Soul Eater style obviously. I think it’s good that I’m experimenting with my own art style!)
I will try to make a pattern out of this when I’m finished making these plushies. And I will upload it on here so other people can make their own plushies with the pattern! Please don’t worry about crediting me or anything, this is a pretty common way to make plushies. :-)
Also, I will make more intricate patterns in the future! I hope to share them when I make them. With those, it would be perfectly fine for people to use those patterns, but crediting me might be a nice thing to do for those-- since they might take longer for me to make, and I will have to experiment with different shapes more. But please feel free to sell anything you make with the patterns I am going to upload. Credit is appreciated, though! :-D Of course, I haven’t released patterns publicly yet. But I am super excited to do so. I’m also super excited to actually design the patterns, too. Yahoo!!! :-) :-P
It might be hard, too, to make the patterns-- because I’ll have to test each pattern I’m making-- to make sure it works when it’s transferred into the fabric and cut and sewn into a 3D shape. But it’s going to be an experiment. I love trying to create things, too. So it’s going to be a challenge, but a fun sort of challenge! :->
Thanks for reading my first blog entry here! If you are new to this blog, and you’re interested in seeing some of my other stuff (mostly drawings and visual arts, but I also upload sewing projects here and there too!)...please feel free to visit my twitter: @melonbbread_exe
Also, my instagram is: @usagi_kid
Please feel free to check my art out whenever! I’ll be working on uploading more stuff when I make them, on a much more consistent basis. Because of the current pandemic, I have a lot more time on my hands to make things and create new projects, as well as working on old or unfinished projects.
Again, thanks for reading!!!! :-D ☆
Also, stay safe! ♡
(I’m hoping everyone is alright and well, even during these difficult times. Please try to have hope! Things will eventually return to normal, I’m thinking. Let’s not give up!)
