Ah, the post-Christmas post. This'll be a short one, but I made a little Cthulhu plushie for a present and I thought I would do a quick rundown of how I made him. He's arguably one of the cuter things I've done in recent years.
I got the idea to make him from several sources. Firstly, the collective love of Cthulhus, and Michaele's style, and also the fact that I had just enough left over fabric from the Riddler Pajama's to pull together a plushie.
First I had to make the pattern, which is not something that I have done much of. For the most part the pattern was free handed, but I used Jamie, the GasMask Bear as size referance since he was about the size, and pot-belliedness that I was looking for.
I didn't have a whole ton of fabric, so I didn't give myself a ton of seam-space, particularly on the tenticals because they were a little dicy to begin with. This was a bit of a mystake. The Ultra-cuddle fabric I was using is extremely finnicky, and needs a decent seem for the stitch to hold at all. Most of the tenticals ended up needing hand stitching. Also, Pins are just about worthless, the fabric is slipper and they tend to either get lost or slip right out.
This is the prechanged head. Ideally stuffed animals should have more character in front, than in back. Thus having a spherical head is no good. Typically the back of the head should be flat, so the front can 'pooch'. But I, being inexperienced, wanted to make it spherical, and stuff it so I could judge how much I wanted to cut out of the back, instead of patterning it that way. I stuffed it, figured out the back, unstuffed and put a seam in the back, to pouch out the front. The trick is that you have to get it right the first time though, or this fabric will just fall apart when you try to rip the seams.
The body was pretty straight forward, but it took a little trying to get the angle I wanted on the head. In the end I handstitched the head on with a plus sign shaped seam. first I did a short front-to-back stitch, securing the head to the neck, and closing the body. Then I stitched slightly side to side under the tenticals to keep his head positioned just the way I wanted.
The Cthulhu did go through a small rebellious phase, like all young ones do.
Original I was gonna give him little stubbly limbs, but there were little stumps where I planned to attach the legs and those were adorable enough that I decided to keep him as just a torso. I think he was cuter for it.
D'awww, isn't he adorable? I was very happy with how he came out. The eyes were a lucky find, I had two little black shoe buttons that were perfect. I dimpled them into his head by stitching them tightly and then looping a thich thread from one eye to another inside of his head. The wings were a last minute touch and light stuffed with wire framing in the top section.
Now you can rule the underworld
and be adorable.
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