ANSWERS : Living

I enjoy sewing but I can figure out a way to make more real-like stuffed animals. I mainly like to sew "mythical creatures" such as dragons, birds ect.

I am having difficulty in designing a pattren to make stuffed animals.

Comments

[DeniseTh74]

I have recently decided to learn how to make a mascot head, and while doing so I came up with a new way to make a completely custom stuffed animal pattern! If you can find firm thick upolstery foam you can carve it into the animal's shape. Use masking tape and completey wrap every body part , like a mummy. Draw your seams directly on the tape, making sure you get every part. Cut off the tape with an exacto knife along the seams and voila! a pattern has been born! Make sure you label each piece before you lose track of what's what. Taking pics will help as you go along. This is a theory only, right now, but it works for costume heads made of fake fur so i don't see why you could not apply this to your stuffed animals. I am going to do this soon and I'll post the process:)

[SewWhat!!]

I've hard of the process before, i'll have to get me some upholstry foam when i'm in the cities next! Though, what would you recomend carving it with?

[DeniseTh74]

I used regular scissors, make sure they are sharp. I still haven't gotten around to doing it and probably won't anytime soon, due to having to work all the tile, lol. But please, try it and see. I bet you will have fun!

[SewWhat!!]

I definitely going to give this a shot! c:

[warengadia]

you have to use a paint and real skin to look real

[SewWhat!!]

What kind of paint do you suggest? I've heard alot about acrylics, but is there a better paint?

[SewWhat!!]

Thanks for all the help guys!

[rachel]

There is a program I found somewhere a while ago that allows you to draw 3-D shapes with a fairly simple editor, and then it creates pattern pieces.

www.den.rcast.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~yuki/plushie/index-e.html

It's Windows-only, and takes a bit of mucking around to get installed, but I found it quite easy to use aside from a couple of bugs.

[jeff-o]

I found it has a lot of bugs, actually.  But, maybe it'll work better for you!

[tewharau]

I agree with rain-oubliette.  Find one you like and take it apart.  However, you've made it more difficult for yourself picking dragons and birds.  Animals with scales and feathers are MUCH harder to make realistic with fabric than furry animals.

Try making the basic shape, then experiment with adding scaly and feathery textures on top of it.

Also, don't forget the public library!  Not everything can be found on the internet.

[rain-oubliette]

Try "reverse engineering". Find a cheap stuffed animal at a thrift shop and carefully take it apart. That will show you the basic pieces in a pattern which you can trace around. From there, you can modify it to fit your needs by drawing your own stuff on the pattern - don't forget seam allowances.

Good luck!

[frollard]

One would first think to look for existing patterns.  Stuff like "stuffed animal patterns" "dragon stuffed animal pattern"...etc.

Can you draw a scale picture of what you want to create?  That would help to visualize the final design - then you can either compare to patterns you find or be able to modify those patterns to suit your intended design.

The true difficulty in making stuffed animals is the compound curves - straight things are easy to make and attach, but anything more complex than a sphere can get pretty difficult.