TBT - The First Kirbys

In the sumer of 2012, before we were able to find manufactured Kirby plush, my son asked me to make some for him. He wanted four, in different colors: 

Yellow Kirby

Blue Kirby

Green Kirby

and Pink, aka Regular Kirby aka Kirby. You might notice that Pink's feet are different to the others, and that's because I later remade them so he would stand. I learned a few things about feet, like using cardboard or hard plastic in the bottoms (recycled yogurt lids) and making little beanbags to weight the bottoms. So pink can stand on its own, unlike the others. Eventually I intended to make the other three so they could stand as well, but as of yet, it hasn't happened. I guess it dropped off of the priority list. 

Since then he has amassed quite a collection of Kirby plush, manufactured, handmade by another maker (the large Dedede), and Mom-made:

He remains a true Kirby fan through and through! 

TBT - Hobbes, I Will Always Love You

Remember awhile back when I wrote about how my spirit animal was a tiger when I was younger? 

The embodiment of that tiger was Hobbes. 

I even have Calvin and Hobbes tattooed on my ankle. 

So of course I had to make the plush. 

Because Hobbes! 

I feel there are no words to express how much Bill Watterson's characters, words, and wisdom meant to me. I've read ALL if the Calvin and Hobbes books to my son dozens of times over, and they've never gotten old. I never tire of reading them, and he never tires of them either.

I still wish he would bring them back to life and write more. I'll keep holding out hope. 

Bill Cipher From Gravity Falls, And a Pig That as it Turns Out, Looks Like Waddles

The pig was an accident. Well I mean, not really, but I hadn't seen the show Gravity Falls yet when my son asked me to make Bill Cipher. I only saw photos on the internet, and only of Bill. Talk about easy to make! I actually made an ornament of him first: 

I had fun with this easy ornament, so it was great with me when he then asked me to make a plush. The plush, of course, has the detail of the brickwork that Bill has...not sure it's really visible in the photo though. 

And when he asked me to make this little pig, I had zero idea that there was actually a pig in the show. I just thought he wanted it because it was cute. Because it is! So cute!

And then maybe even that day we began watching Gravity Falls together (which is a phenomenal cartoon, by the way) and I learned who and what I'd just made. Waddles! What? Well, maybe Waddles as a baby. But still!

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. 

TBT - More Kirby Universe Plush

As I've mentioned before, my son is a huge Kirby fan, an as such, has asked me to make Kirby plush when he has been unable to find the ones he wants that are manufactured. I've been more than happy to oblige because his art direction helps me hone my plush-making skills.

This one is Waddle Dee. I used pipe cleaners inside his antenna, so they are fully posable.

Metaknight unmasked. 

This is Chilly. He might seem pretty easy to make, but that hat! It's a fez, and I had to make it stand up on its own, and it took me a long time to get it right. I was super proud that I accomplished it. Achievement unlocked: Fez!

And I clearly perfected my Kirbys, because when asked to make fighter Kirby, I made this guy, who is more perfectly round than any plush Kirby I've ever seen:

Rocked it!

And last but not least, metal Kirby. Satin does NOT make good plush material! Lots of interfacing here, and it's a bit delicate. But because it's meant to be metal, it's also faceted, which was another interesting challenge. 

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!

Throw Back Thursday - Angry Birds Edition

Angry Birds weren't the first plush I made, but they were the first group of plush I attempted. These are sort of great starter plush because they's almost all round, and their features are fairly simplistic. My only problem was not making them too big - I sort of think I did. I made these before Kiernen became so interested in being an actual collector. Before he had a preference for store-bought plush for their collectible value.

I made all of these around Fall/WInter 2012.

Bomb Bird

Orange Bird

King Pig

Blue Bird

Chuck

Red Bird

Blue from Rio (this one had the most difficult details to get down)

Ice bird

Green Terrance

Everything is Awesome!

My family are HUGE LEGO fans. I mean, we pretty much embrace almost anything LEGO, and we have invested so much money in LEGO sets, videogames, apparel...yeah, we're fans. We're such fans that they know our family at our local LEGO store, and we get little special favors at events on occasion.

And remember how my kiddo is a huge plush collector, and has this awesome insanely large plush collection? And how he loves having plush of his favorite characters? 

Well, after we saw The LEGO Movie, we were lamenting that LEGO doesn't make plush...and Unikitty is a character that was born to be a cute cuddly plush, right? SO *I* made her into one, because Kiernen and I both wanted it to happen, if I'm honest. 

Everything is Awesome!

She stands 18" from bottom to top of her horn, and is Unikitty through and through. 

From the side

A close-up of her face. For being all rectangles (and a few circles), she was NOT as easy as I thought she would be to make! But she was worth it! 

Just ask this happy fan!

Maybe I'll make the other versions as well, one of these days. I'm thinking about trying to make them a bit smaller and more portable. We shall see what the Spoons allow!

Spoonikitty! Or How I Turned My Illness into a Rainbow Zebra Unicorn Butterfly Kitten

Here's the thing about chronic illness that no one ever tells you: it's like those potato chips: no one gets just one. No one with chronic illness has just the one thing happening, or just the one diagnosis - they ALL have comorbidities.

In case you're not sure what that means, comorbidity means the simultaneous presence of two or more chronic diseases or conditions in a patient. I have yet to meet a spoonie (that's what we call ourselves, us chronically ill folks, I'll get to that in a second) who has less than three chronic illnesses. For example, I have Mast Cell Activation Disorder, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, Hypothyroid, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, just to name a few. Many have overlapping symptoms, and maybe some are really a symptom of having the others. They're all related, but a person can have any one of my diseases without having any of the others. Lucky me, I hit the jackpot and got ALL of these (plus some I didn't name!)
Maybe there is that one person who just has the one thing, but I assert that if that is the case, they would be the exception rather than the rule. 

But I digress. My point is, we are many-faceted, we spoonies. Multi-layered. Complicated. Delicate snowflakes. Rainbow unicorn butterfly kittens.

And one day, someone posted this in my facebook feed:

And I saw it and said "YES!"

And then, "I must make that into a plush....only it needs to also have zebra stripes.

Why zebra stripes, you might be asking?

Want one? I'm selling them, too! In my Etsy store. 

The zebra is our mascot. There's a saying in western medicine, "When you hear hoof-beats, think horses, not zebras." It's meant to make doctors think of the most common causes of symptoms, not the rare ones. It often works - but zebras, though rare, DO exist. Doctors tend to forget this at times, which is why so many chronic and invisible illnesses take YEARS to diagnose. 

For many of us, this creates medical PTSD - not being believed, undergoing test after test, or worse, being told it's "all in our heads". It ISN'T. Our illnesses are real, and once we DO finally have a diagnosis, our lives are STILL spent in doctors offices, hospitals, physical therapy offices, and therapists' offices (for all of the medical PTSD and living in an ableist world with a disability, and all we've lost to these illnesses). 

Want one? I'm selling them, too! In my Etsy store. 

Sometimes it can help to know that we are not alone. That there are others like us, who have undergone the same arduous journey, who really GET what it's like to live with chronic and often invisible illness, who are cheering for each other, supporting each other, wanting us to do well and live the best life it is possible for us to live. 

That's where Spoonikitty was born. 

Want one? I'm selling them, too! In my Etsy store. 

"You keep talking about spoons...what on earth do spoons have to do with chronic illness???"

Well, a woman named Christine, who lives with lupus, wrote The Spoon Theory, which is a brilliant explanation of what it is like to live with a chronic illness. 

And it caught on like wildfire, spreading throughout the chronically ill like a beacon of light: We Are the Spoonies. 

Want one? I'm selling them, too! In my Etsy store. 

Spoonikitty represents us. And also, the support we so much need, and the understanding and love we have for each other. 

Spoonikitty is meant to offer comfort. And the reminder that we are all out here rooting for each other. Even when it's crazy hard. 

Want one? I'm selling them, too! In my Etsy store. 

Also, Spoonikitty is super adorable. And not just for us - for everyone. Everyone needs comfort and support every now and again.

Want one? I'm selling them, too! In my Etsy store. 

A portion of the proceeds go to paying for physical therapy and my mountain of medical bills. 

This is a detail of one of the types of wings. All are unique, so yours may vary. Also if you don't see the one you want in the shop, let me know, I'll make the one you prefer. I can do all one color (zebra-striped or plain), too.

They're delightfully snuggable. And unique in every way, just like you. And me.