A Toy Rabbit
A hand sewn soft toy from faux suede and viscose plumetis, stuffed with polyester.Ceres Miller, 2023
This soft toy rabbit was developed from scratch with paper samples and models over a few weeks. The thin plumetis on the tummy allows the rabbit's back legs a wide range of movement, allowing it to sit, stand, and lay flat.
This is a useful first prototype in a kind of making that I wasn't that familiar with. It was an exercise in both sculpture and functional textile craft.
Starting with paper, the shapes and sizes were guessed and developed iteratively. I started with the head, and worked on the body after.
Paper does not represent how the rabbit will look stuffed. I just guessed how the textile would stretch and shape when stuffed, and in this stage, I focussed on making sure the different parts would fit together properly.
I didn't start with a template or by disassembling another stuffed toy, because I wanted to see how far I could get working originally. I also knew I wanted it to be stuffed with fiber so that it would be soft, but still be able to move with a wide range of movement (like how bean stuffing would allow) and since I was hand sewing instead of machine sewing, I could work with a greater degree of contortion than a market product might have.
Paper tends to only bend on a single axis. Paper samples are generally not that useful, even if they are very quick to make, but this bending limitation helped me to see where the fabric would need to bend and stretch, so I could choose where to use the thinner plumetis and the stiffer faux suede.
After making paper templates I transferred them to the fabric by silhouetting them with chalkboard chalk. The chalk rubbed off as I was sewing, which made the process more difficult. Tailors chalk is clay-based, which doesn't rub off as easily, but tailoring and dressmaking also use a uniform 10mm margin outside the chalk when cutting the panels, which would have helped.
The rabbit is sewn inside out so that the rough edges and seams of every panel are hidden inside. The stuffing is put in selectively; thicker in the legs and head so that they don't deflate when played with, and thinner in the body so that it's soft to touch. The stuffing around the tummy is very light so that the rabbit can sit and stretch.
Optionally different stuffings for different areas could be used. The polyester stuffing is very soft and light, but wood fiber stuffing is even lighter; though it doesn't compact as well. Wood fiber stuffing could have been used for these moveable parts like the rabbit's tummy.
The toy's eyes are old-style glass beads with a metal hook on the back. These are no longer used in stuffed toys, instead safety eyes are used that fasten in like snap rivets. However the toy is not for a young child, and the glass eyes look much nicer. They are held pretty securely in place using embroidery thread that ties them together through the head, and tied off under the ear.
The rabbit was finished with black wool around the eyes and on the feet, and grey sewing thread for the whiskers.