I was recently very inspired by the Blob Fish and wanted to use this as a design feature in my next creature. As I tinkered with the design, I recalled other animals, such as the Proboscis Monkey and Elephant Seal, which also have large, seemingly unwieldly noses.
The result, unlike any of the above animals, was more adorable than I could have predicted. As I’ve said before, I never quite know how these will look, especially as I decide on the eye placement and eyelid position after the machine sewing has been completed. I opted for a higher, forward-facing eye for this little guy, and a lower and slightly open mouth.
I knew that I wanted to use this almost primary yellow fabric for a doll and wasn’t initially sure if this was the right design to use it for, but I love it. To me, this baby looks a bit anxious and concerned–a bit serious. He will be available as part of my next drop and the adoption fee will be $175.
The third creature baby that I’ll have ready for adoption soon (make sure you’re signed up for my mailing list so that you can be notified about release dates!) is a baby Ogress, or Ogrette? A girl Ogre (all of my creature babies can be whatever gender you/they want).
Tilly has a very colorful pair of overalls that I made just for her. They have differently colored glowing balls of light. Her tuft of hair is a shocking electric green and her body is a lovely blue. I am learning that my creature babies can be anywhere on a spectrum of primary emotional constitution, ranging from melancholy, to calm but happy, to totally mischievous. I’d say Tilly is a mix of calm and mischievous.
One of the newest Way Home Creature Nursery babies, Gerrold, is chuckling and cackling his way through life, keeping everybody in a good mood. It’s hard not to feel at ease with his good natured grin. He does love to play pranks, much to Sad Harold’s chagrin.
Gerrold is wearing a comfortable jumpsuit that I made, but like all of my baby creatures, he fits in most newborn sized clothing!
Gerrold will be ready to adopt soon! Be sure to sign up for my mailing list to be notified of when and where you can adopt Gerrold and his friends.
This is Harold, a sad little monster is one of the newest Way Home Creature Nursery babies. He has the same pouty expression as some of my others–but Harold is a little extra melancholy. As I’ve said before, I try to embrace all emotions, so instead of trying to cheer him up, we just let him feel whatever he feels.
This monster doesn’t like to draw attention to himself so he’s most comfortable in these understated yet high quality pajama type pants and a simple white onesie (but, I saw him looking longingly over my shoulder at some loud and bright baby pajamas on my phone, so I’d bet that, once settled into his new home and away from the competition of the other creature babies, he might like some more colorful duds).
Harold will be available for adoption soon–be sure to sign up for my mailing list so that you can get all of the details about the release date!
This past winter, I decided to make my daughter a silly puppet. I had made my first fabric puppets using the Tuscon Puppet lady’s patterns a couple of years ago, so I had a general idea of how to do the mouth and was excited to try my own pattern. The result was a silly bird that we named Dody. My daughter seemed to enjoy talking to Dody and watching the her various hijinks. The puppet became like a member of the family. Although my daughter has also taken to other dolls and soft toys, the moving parts of a puppet and the tendency for the holder to want to animate them more, seems to create more of an impression than a regular soft toy.
I made several other puppets after that point. I spent a lot of time studying the commercially-made plush puppets my daughter had in order to determine how they were constructed. I figured out that there are two basic ways that the mouth liners can be made, and identified some basic construction choices that help make the open mouth functional yet compatible with the overall design.
Almost all of my recent creature dolls can be puppets with moveable mouths. I have made the mouth slightly open on some of my dolls, because it looks really cute, but I hadn’t made any with a full opening to use as a puppet.
For this puppet, I tried a new leg style on my baby creature pattern (normally I do a jointed leg) and I also set the arms in a little differently. I stabilized the mouth liners with foam interfacing and inserted a cotton liner so that the stuffing and insides are safe from your hand when its inserted. Although I am not sure I’d do this leg style for a regular doll since it’s not that flexible, it worked nicely for the puppet because the legs are stable but can also be forced down to sitting type position as you’re holding the puppet.
I also want to tinker with the mouth liner–the foam was a bit bulky. I may try something thinner, or perhaps line the inside of the mouth with the foam again but not have the foam also in the seam allowance.
I dressed this puppet in these adorable knitted overalls (adapted from pattern I purchased from Unique Knit by Caroline)–I had been saving this gorgeous Malabrigo yarn for YEARS and made a baby sweater and these pants, but never found the right doll for them. The pants fit this puppet perfectly and I made them into overalls to tie it all together.
My original vision for this puppet included a short, pageboy style wig but I think that both of these look adorable and hilarious. I love combining somewhat outdated/old looking wigs with these creatures.
I have always loved Folkmanis puppets, as well as my beloved Hosung monkey puppets, because they’re functional soft toys while also puppets. As much as I like more professional puppets, they’re made with a lot of glue and foam and really aren’t meant to double as a durable soft toy. I’m happy that I figured out how to make patterns that can be both. My experience with my daughter proved the amazing social-emotional and educational potential that puppets have–so this is a big incentive for me to make them.
I have continued to work on my creature plush dolls. I have so much fun playing with different mouth shapes and eye placement, and of course, outfits! This creature baby came out quite frog-like, although that wasn’t my intention.
These creatures represent for me a happy marriage of creepy and cute. In this case, I actually think the creepy aspect really hearkens back to the human aspects, whereas the “cute” comes from the monstrous and babyish features. That is not to say that I think humans are exclusively creepy or bad–rather, I’m really interested in human emotions such as surliness, misery, irritability, yearning–all emotions that are NOT happy, precious, cheerful–yet, I find they become endearing when paired with babyish features (this is probably why people love babies that look like grumpy old men).
As I said in my aliens post, I don’t like creepy or monstrous characters that are too one-dimensional. I have to inject some element of human vulnerability. I do enjoy making simple and cheerful dolls with Everybuddies but I also really like making these creatures that have an element of desperation and unease…while still being cute. This froggish baby creature will be available in my shop on Thursday, August 11 at 8:00 PM EST.
I had been working on digitizing my Bunting Doll pattern (below) to sell in my Everybuddies pattern shop when I got the idea to also do this pattern as a furry critter and/or monster pattern. I used the same pattern but added floppy ears and did the face embroidery differently and ended up with this sweet puppy.
I loved how it turned out but also realized that the number of seams and pieces in this pattern make it a bit of a challenge to sew up in plush fabric. This isn’t a surprise as I tend to over design at times, making more seams than necessary. I decided to simplify the pattern and worked up these person, monster and teddy dolls using the simplified version. I kept the body/rear structure as this allows the doll to sit on its own–something that I think sets these dolls apart from most plush which are just two identical body pieces sewn together.
This new version is much easier to sew up with difficult faux fur, and also shows off the pattern of the fleece better without a center front seam. I also made a version with the face partially on the fold so that there is no center seam in the middle of the face (for the human versions, I still keep the seam because that allows me to get that button nose).
I love to make complicated, challenging patterns, but I also like to challenge myself to simplify. The nice thing about having simpler patterns is that they take less time to work up and, in many ways, they offer more options. I find it a productive design challenge to make something that’s better for its simplicity, where the simplicity is the strength, rather than the simplicity coming across as an outcome of the designer’s limitations. This is more challenging than making something that’s very detailed/realistic/technical.
The bear has sold but the puppy, monster and plaid doll are available in my Etsy shop.
Expression is everything for me when it comes to making plush (my child-friendly doll line is somewhat of an exception). Eyes are the windows to the soul, as they say. While I mostly focus on making cute and endearing plush faces, I also love drawing anguished and perturbed faces in my sketchbook. I even like making horrible faces in the mirror and have done for most of my life, just because it makes me laugh (my mother doesn’t find it that funny when I text my scary faces to her).
Anyway, I wanted to find a way to merge my love of the full spectrum of emotions into my plush. I also wanted to try something different in terms of making a simple construction but detailed applique face.
I also thought the simple construction would be a fun opportunity to make a plush that could be heavily weighted and have a different sensory appeal than my usual dolls. I loved how these came out. I didn’t intend for them to have overt mental health benefits, but the more they evolved, the more I was reminded that it’s important to normalize feeling the way this bat and owl feel—forlorn, tired, forsaken, anguished—however you wish to interpret their weary grimaces.
Their construction enabled me to fill them heavily with pellets, making them squishy and giving them a pleasing “shaky” sound when moved. This, combined with their luxurious fur, makes them irresistible to hold and squeeze. It feels nice to have one resting in your lap while you work on the computer, and they look nice on a shelf as well.
Once upon a time, when I was about six years old, I announced that I would be painting one monster per night. As with most of my schemes and plans, I got a few nights into it and then lost interest or gave up. But, I have always been interested in colorful, adorable monsters, and I remember wishing so badly that I had been the one to come up with Alf, or E.T. or Baby Sinclair. The monster illustration bug got me again when I was 31–I drew one creature and, again, lost interest, mostly because I realized that my illustration skills needed refining.
I also have always loved color–48+ color paint and marker sets are always enticing to me, and when I shop for fabric I’m always drawn to the loudest and boldest prints–but never get them. But, I’ve never felt skilled at putting colors together, and when I was doing plush based on real animals, I tended to work mostly in neutrals, looking back longingly at the rainbow fur. The only place I’ve really indulged in my love of color is with my addiction to rainbow sprinkles and frosted Lofthouse cookies.
Then, just over this past year, almost by accident, I began rendering my monster fantasies in plush form, and I am absolutely thrilled with the results. As I mentioned in other posts, I really relate to odd–yet cute–monstrosities, even more to some extent than the real-life animals that I love. It occurred to me with this most recent creature variation–which I call the Purple People Pleaser– that it would look amazing in different bold and playful colors–like a frosted sprinkle cookie in doll form! I love it in purple and look forward to trying more colors.
What is the point of all this? Two things:
1) I spent a lot of time improving my illustration and color theory skills by practicing, studying, looking things up and taking lots of Skillshare classes during my free trial LOL. I didn’t do all that with the goal of making these colorful monsters, but rather as parts of my other plush-making and illustration goals. That relentless study and practice gave me the dexterity to very organically make what I really wanted to make all along: adorable monstrosities. Kind of like when someone practices guitar a lot and can noodle without thinking about it.
2) Sometimes themes travel with you for a long time before they finally find a way to express themselves. All of my intensely hard work teaching myself flat pattern drafting for apparel, and all of that learning about design and color really coalesced into something that I loved all along, but which I didn’t really try that hard to do either when I was six nor when I was older.
So, I guess my message is to just keep plugging away and, if necessary, take the time to learn some new skills, and allow yourself to flop around in the process. It’ll all work out in the end.
I was working on this monster mouth pattern (really, with the goal of it coming out looking differently, but decided to just move on and make something with it, in the spirit of not having rigid ideas about how things should look and not overworking my dolls). I decided to pair a more textural plush (this black sherpa) with minky and see how it turned out. I couldn’t have predicted at all how it would look, but I loved the result. The horns really tie it together.
I knew I wanted to give it some kind of applique in the upper torso as the piece de la resistance. On a whim, I took a red felt heart that I’d cut out at some point over the past three months and put it on the chest. I loved the way it looked but immediately thought, “No, only a few people would like that. No, people might find that weird.” But I didn’t give up on the idea. Even before my IG polls came back at 100% in support of putting the heart on, I’d decided it was the right choice.
I’ve always loved the idea of heavy-handed emotional symbols, like hearts, on plush. I’m an emotional person and my continuing emotional development and growth is something I take really seriously. I also take mental health of others seriously. I got the idea (not sure if it was before or after I thought of the Velvet Underground song, Sweet Jane, and it’s line, “anyone who ever had a heart/wouldn’t turn around and break it”) to break the heart and stitch it back together–like a friendship necklace.
Neuroplasticity and resilience aren’t necessarily terms you associate with monster plushies, but they’re related. By playing and cuddling with soft toys, we repair wounds. This monster shows us that our heartaches can be repaired, eventually. I call it the Mendy Monster–because his heart is mended–with the scars for all to see. Mendy Monster will be available in my Etsy shop soon–be sure to sign up for my mailing list to be notified when.
Way Home Art 