The custom softie I was making last week was “Officer Dan”, the face of a new board game called Highway Patrol. He will be part of the game promotion when its inventors travel to the International Toy Trade Show in New York next week.
I’ll post a few more making photo’s in my photoset at Flickr in the next day or two.
Continuing on with my pattern making, once the clay sculpt is done I cover it first with aluminium foil, and then with masking tape. The foil covers the complex contours easily and stays in place, and the masking tape holds the foil shape together when it comes off the maquette.
I draw cutting lines keeping in mind both where to cut to get the pattern off the model easily, and where seams are going to be best for assembling the final pattern in fabric. I also sometimes mark midlines or possible dart lines that might be useful later.
It’s also good to label the pieces before they are cut off, because they are not alway easy to identify once they are cut up. These are still not 2D; they’ll need to have some further cuts made in them, but I haven’t chosen fabric yet, and if it’s stretchy I may not need as many cuts.
I began a new project yesterday, a commissioned soft plush toy. I can’t disclose exactly what at the moment, but can show some indistinct making shots. A clay maquette is probably a weird way to start a softie, but I find drawing a 2D dressmaking style pattern with darts and tucks difficult. It’s much quicker for me to start with a 3D shape and make a pattern from that.
Here’s the rough wire armature intended to hold the clay up,
followed by chicken wire and some crumpled newspaper to fill out the space.
Then the clay is sculpted on top, embedding in the wire.
The theme for Month of Softies this month was ‘May Flowers’. My first thought was of daffodils, as I remember loving how they came up all over the place in lawns in the chilly spring in York and Cambridge; and I thought I might try to make Talitha, the brave daffodil princess from the book ‘The Mouldy’ by William Mayne, and illustrated by Nicola Bayley:
Then I decided to consider Australian May flowers. There isn’t much flowering here in May, except some irises which usually flower in July, but this year are muddled by our late winter and drought. But there are a few winter-flowering eucalypt trees, so I started planning a red gumnut flower fairy. I thought the stamens could make a kind of drop skirt, or hat fringe, but in the end decided that I liked the flower just as a flower.
Its quite big; including the leaves it measures just over 40cm (16in). For the stamens I used lycra, an idea that I had previously found worked well for making small octopus tentacles! I like the soft colours, too. There are few more pictures:
What a scramble – I forgot February was so short! But here is my White Rabbit for Loobylu’s Month of Softies, which this month was on the theme of Alice in Wonderland. He stands about 40 cm (15 in) tall, and is covered in a very soft kind of fluffy material, (I’m not sure what – its not fleece or
terry towelling). He was going to have a blue jacket and be holding a
pocket watch, but I ran out of time to make those today.
The rabbit is actually a very simple glove puppet, as he fits on your hand and you can turn his head with a rod inside his body. He is very cuddly, and its fun to cradle him your arms (without it being obvious that one arm is inside) and make him come alive.
Update: Here are some pictures of him now he is finished:
