Otter Soft Toy
Stuffed animal made with polyester sherpa fabric, faux leatherette and black wool embroidered details.Ceres Miller, 2023
This stuffed otter was made after the soft toy rabbit and improves upon it by using extra pieces for the head and face, helping make it rounder, less fish-eyed, and easier to pose at the neck.
Making this was useful for understanding and improving on a workflow. Having worked with paper models for 2 of these projects, I feel confident in working in real space enough that doing the modelling with digital pattern cutting software or even unfolding 3D model meshes could be much faster.
As before I started with the head and worked downward. When beginning, I need to make sure the head is exactly how I want it, because it sets the scale for the rest of the toy. It's also the most expressive part of a body, animal or human, followed closely by the hands.
It's worth noting that I never really measured any of the pieces. When getting seperate pieces to match up, I would guess the length of the edge, cut out the paper template, then try it on, and make adjustments as needed. When working with curves, I would make use of the length of a pencil or my hand to help. I did this for speed reasons, as I wanted to move as quickly as possible. When working with many complicated and small pieces, it can sometimes reduce measuring errors to just eyeball everything.
I worked again all hand sewing. I only learned recently how to use a sewing machine, as I never had access to one, but as far as I know, when making little details a sewing machine is messier and more error prone than just hand sewing, especially on this high-pile sherpa fabric. A walking foot on a sewing machine can be used, as with any knit fabric, but many of the shapes I was using had corners that are too tight for a sewing machine anyway.
A project later may be to make a toy that can be put together with a sewing machine, but I really value the expressiveness in shape that I can get by hand sewing.
A faux leatherette was used for the paws and feet and details embroidered onto them with black wool. Embroidering by hand in this way is always a huge pain, because I use a very thick embroidery needle in order to fit the wool through, which makes pushing the needle through sometimes require a pair of pliers. I do the embroidery last because the stuffed shape is meant to change with the embroidery, in the case of the paws and flippers, the wool helps add definition.
Leatherworkers will stamp a hole before sewing with thick thread. It is however hard to do this with knit fabrics. A round-tipped needle rather than a sharp one can prevent the needle going through the weave rather than the gaps between them, but a sharp pointed needle avoids getting stuck in the stuffing or the pile. Maybe the solution is just using pliers after all.
I think eventually I'd like to sell stuffed toys like these in small batches. Before that happens I need to get faster at making them, and I also need to explore the safety and longevity considerations of toymaking, as currently I use glass eyes rather than safety eyes, and the important shape of the head is formed like a cloth doll but without the thick wadded stuffing that prevents that shape from coming apart.