Preparations for Dragon*Con

I'm busy sewing as much as possible in preparation for Dragon*Con (held in Atlanta over Labor Day weekend). This is more of a holiday for me than a convention. We've been going for years now and I'm really looking forward to it. We always have interesting costumes and generally just have a lot of fun. I'll be taking a lot of pictures while I'm there of my partner and our friends. I do a lot of the product photos for Moony Couture and we've got a lot of new costumes to showcase.

I do make some of my own costumes, so I thought I'd share the one I'll be working on next.  ^_^ 

I'm really not usually one to do girly costumes, in fact I mostly cosplay as male characters.  However, She-ra has been a childhood favorite of mine and I've been wanting to make this costume for years.  Well I'm finally going to do it.  My spouse even made a Shadow Weaver costume to go with me so I'll have someone to fight.  :)

I'll try to share some pictures as I get it put together.  I'm hoping that I won't look too ridiculous in the outfit.  If I can at least do her justice, I'll be happy. 

My New Zibbet Store

I promise I won't be all boring really.  ^_^  I've just been trying out Zibbet and I'm really excited to use it more for my sales.

All of my products are currently available on etsy or Zibbet. However, I believe I may post more frequently on Zibbet in the future. I'll keep you updated when I have new products available.

My First Wholesale Order

I'm pretty proud of myself and my wonderful partner at Moony Couture Designs. We had our first wholesale order. It's going to be for Lips Down on Dixie, Atlanta's Rocky Horror Shadowcast. They'll be selling them at Dragon*Con this year.

They requested Frank, Magenta, and Columbia in the outfits shown.  There will be a total of 30 dolls available by Dragon*Con.  If they're successful, it's likely that we'll be making more of them in the future. 

How to Start a Plushie - Part 2

Materials...

I decided to devote at least one part to discussing the materials I work with and why.  I use a lot of scraps for clothing and accessories, so I won't go into much detail about that.  It depends mostly on what fabrics are available in our fabric closet (it's a pretty full one too ^_^) and what the character needs.

The two basic materials for every plushie I make are felt and muslin.  Felt is very common for plush dolls.  Most UFO catchers (those cute super deformed versions of anime characters) are made with felt.  They're also commonly very small, which makes them a bit hard to cuddle with.  Where's the fun in that?  I do like using felt for hair (and previously faces) because it is inexpensive and it looks much nicer than using yarn (which is another common hair option and the one I use only on my ragdolls). 

The bodies are always made with muslin.  Muslin is commonly used to make patterns and make dummy clothing.  It's a rough and undyed material.  That might not sound very appealing, but it is a comfortable material.  Once sewed up and stuffed, muslin will make a soft and cuddly doll perfect for sharing with your little ones and friends.  Just no pulling or serious rough housing.  As much as I love working with the muslin, it's easy to fray.  So far I haven't had any complaints about it, so hopefully it will continue to work well in the future.

I think I've got only one more post in this series.  My last post on How to Start will be about patterns and cutting out your project.  I hope everyone's liking these so far.  Please let me know if you have any questions and if I don't know the answer, I'm certain I can find someone with the answer.  ^_^

New Finished Dollies

I'm still working on my How to Start posts, but I thought until I finished it I would at least share with everyone the newest doll that is in my store.

This is the last of my Kuroshitsuji Ragdoll set, and he was definitely the most challenging.  Grell's got a lot of hair, so getting all of that onto his head was a fun job.  He's already up on my etsy store and is ready to ship out immediately.  Unlike most of the products on my store, he's ready made.  Most of the other products I offer are actually custom made when they are ordered.  I have a good amount of started plushies, so I'm trying to go through them now and add them to the store as I finish them.  

Last but certainly not least is the ragdoll I made for the winner of my raffle.  The request was for a William T. Spears doll, and I think he came out great!  I'm hoping that he'll be loved in his new home as well.  ^_^

How to Start Making a Plushie - Part 1

Part 1 - Getting Ideas

Having unique ideas of what to write about is getting harder all the time. I mean everyone writes about what they do and how they do it. Well, I thought I would try something at least a little different. I'm going to give you some thoughts about how I START working on a new project.

Every project is a little bit different, but since I create almost exclusively fandom plushies the first most logical step is to find a picture of what I'm making. I'm a heavy user of Google Images and Deviantart for reference pictures. Why would I use Deviantart? Well, I generally do this because there are some charcters/art etc that's rather well loved, but maybe for some reason I cannot find a full legnth image to start with. Fanart can be your friend. ^_~ Other times its simply because I didn't think to create a doll for a certain character and seeing what's popular there gives me a good idea.

This was the only image I could find that was "official" for this version of Vocaloid Miku. The rest of the design is me and ideas from others' fanart.

I'll admit, that coming up with something new is a bit more challenging for me. I prefer to work with other people's artwork and make it three dimensional. So I'd probably make a decent seamstress but never make it big in the fashion world. ^_~ I am eager to branch out and change my sewing styles. I've made no less than 75 of my fandom dolls so that's a LOT and despite it being over the course of several years, it still can get rather dull.

So I've been reading a lot of Stuffed Magazine (highly recommend but I wish they were more consistent in publishing and more frequent than two to four times a year) and just trying to experiment. I've made two new body styles but I've had to put them on hold due to the volume of commission requests that I've had at the moment. I have finished a project using one of the new body types that I made. You can see the box-y body style I drafted here. I was really proud of how he turned out. ^_^

This was my first attempt at revising a pattern that I had already. I'm still trying to decide how I want to do the clothing for this particular doll.

This is just the first part of how I start making my plushies. I intended to go into more detail regarding actually going through the steps of pre-construction such as collecting supplies and cutting everything out. I'll save that for my next big post. Is there anything that you think you would be interested in hearing about? I won't pretend to be an experiment by any means, but if I know the answer I'll be happy to answer or find the answer for you.

Updates All Around

Well, I've been busy as of late.  I wish I could say it was all on plushies, but this is not my full time job.  ;_;

But I do have new pictures to show off.  ^_^  My partner and I just finished a pair of Doctor Plushies that came out really well.  We've got another 10th Doctor (this time in his blue suit, which will be new for us ^_^) and a REALLY big wholesale order for Lips Down on Dixie for 30 Rocky Horror Plushies. Those will be available at Dragon*Con this year at their table.  I need to look into getting some tags for our dolls and would love some suggestions if anyone has some.  ^_^

Also just added two ready-made Torchwood dolls to the store.  Jack Harkness and Ianto Jones are both available and ready to go to a good home.