Bowser Jr's Clown Car - An Experiment in Minky

I've made a lot of plush up to this point, but one thing is I usually only use polyester fleece. 1) Because it's inexpensive; 2) It's really easy to work with 3) It's pretty forgiving 4) I have lots of it in many different colors. But it's not really TRUE plush fabric, either - it's more of what you use when you can't find The Good Stuff. I'm talking about minky, the fabric that baby blankets are made of. It's soft, it makes plush look more like "real" plush, but it has drawbacks: 1) It's difficult to work with; 2) It's expensive 3) It is NOT forgiving, at all. At least, not for someone like me who has never worked with it before. Oh my goodness, what a learning curve! 

And here's where Bower Jr's Clown Car comes in. 

I've been wanting to learn to work with minky for quite some time, and I figured this would be as good a time as any. I mean it only uses three colors, and not much of two of them, so that makes getting the fabric much less expensive than other projects could be. And I erroneously thought, it's a sphere - I've done tons of spheres, this should be pretty easy.....

No. It was NOT. I HAVE done tons of spheres, and spheres in and of themselves are easy and straightforward, but making a sphere with its top cut off that it still stiff enough to hold up and retain its spherical shape, even though it is made of really soft material...do you see how this might be more complicated than I anticipated? Yeah. After much trial and error and more error and remaking of things, this is what I finally ended up with:

Note that I did NOT make the plush of Bowser Jr - Nintendo did that. Or whomever they contracted with. I just made the clown car to fit him, so he'd have a sweet ride in which to chase Mario and Luigi.

I'm not saying it's horrible or anything, but....it is definitely much more wrinkly than I'd have liked. It DOES retain its shape on its own, thanks to some really heavy duty interfacing. I'm okay with it I guess, for a first shot.

My son is quite happy with it and gave me no complaints - only direction on placement of face and size of eyes and such as I was making it. I wish it were better, but it's helping me build my skills with minky. Hopefully next time I use this difficult but oh-so-soft fabric, I'll choose some shapes that are a bit easier to work with. But knowing me, I probably won't. That Kirby Galacta Knight fabric has been waiting a loooong time. Perhaps I ought to get to work. Well, after I finish this Sans from Undertale plush I'm working on, anyway.