TBT - The First Plush I Ever Made - Boo

This is where it all began, folks. The first plush my son ever asked me to make. 

This was the one that started it all. 

Boo, from the Mario games. 

Now he has the professionally manufactured Boo from Nintendo, but this one will always hold a special place in my heart. 

My first Boo. 

The Kirby Army - Plush With a Mission

Around last Christmas my son got into having armies of things. First he asked me to make an Army of Kirbys - presumably for a plush series he has or had in the works - he is always coming up with all of these wonderfully creative ideas for plush series on YouTube, but his ideas amass faster than he can enact them. And then often he is onto the next thing before they come to fruition. Ah well. I don't mind making the plush, no matter what they get used for.

For Christmas I also got him ten penguin ball plush about the same size as the Kirbys. All of them are around 4" tall, and are very soft and easy to throw like snowballs - you know, in case a Kirby vs Penguin Ball war breaks out. 

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. 

King Bobomb and His Minion, Kirby

This time my son gave me what turned out to be a VERY easy plush to make for him - King Bobomb. Easy because he wanted him to be large, and large is always so much easier than small. And easy because he is all pretty simple shapes to cut and sew. 

The hardest part of him was his shoes, for which I used a slipper tutorial I found somewhere on the internet. Oh, and maybe his crown. It was very specific - shiny gold fabric, interfacing so it would stand up and also hold the weight of the jewels, and jewels we managed to find in a big bag called "rhinestones".

Sadly you cannot see from these photos, but there are two smaller jewels on the side of the crown as well. 

I included one of the tiny Kirbys I made from The Kirby Army - at the same time my son requested I make him ten little Kirbys, all pink. So I did. They're about 4" high, so that gives you scale. Plus Kirby just looks so adorable sitting there in front of King Bobomb.

Yo-Kai Watch Schmoopie Plush

My son is a huge Nintendo fan, and the newer game Yo-Kai Watch is no exception. To be fair, Yo-Kai Watch is only new in the U.S. - it has been out in several incarnations in Japan for years now. It's been so successful, though, that apparently now it's gone to other markets, worldwide.

He got REALLY into the game while he was playing it, and collected as much of the plush as he could. Remember, he is a collector. His plush collection is mighty impressive.

Of the Yo-Kai characters, he has Jibanyan, Goldenyan, Robonyan, and another Jibanyan (pictured), and not pictured are Pandanoko, Mini Robonyan and Whisper. Like Pokemon, there are many many Yo-Kai characters, and one that he really wanted and we never found a plush for was one called Shmoopie.

Enter Mama the Plush Maker. A new project to hone my plush-making skills. His original request was that I make two - one for him, and the other for his BFF. But for practice (and maybe to sell), I went ahead and made a few more. This is what Shmoopie looks like in the game: 

And here is my best approximation:

The hardest thing was his hat. I learned all about different kinds of Samurai hats in order to make these right. 

The side views. 

"Shmoopie" is a portmanteau of the words smooch and pie. Smooch is the sound heard when kissing someone and pie is sometimes used as a way to make something cute.

Shmoopie is so adorable. Cute little fluffy tail!

Early 2013 Kirby Plush

I might have mentioned I like to make plush, which was started by my son asking me to create some plush he couldn't find for sale. One of his favorites to ask me to make, and getting pretty easy to make, are Kirby plush from the Nintendo series of Kirby games. He is a HUGE fan.

These are a few of the Kirby plush I've made him in 2013, after I got my Kirby technique down. I suppose I COULD do some commissions of these in my Etsy shop, if someone asked me to.

The center photo is a mix of plush I made, storebought plush, and plush I commissioned someone else to do (that would be the giant King Dedede there). Top from right to left are: Chilly, Waddle Doo, Kirby....the blue one is Meta Knight unmasked, the bottom is Fighter Kirby. Then there is green, lemon and blue kirby in the middle photo, and some others.