6. Sewing a ball

I have one hobby I love to do in my spare time (which I am severely lacking in right now thanks to midterms.) I sew, and I like to think I’m pretty good at it. It’s very soothing to me. I turn on some music and pin, stitch, and iron until I have a new costume or toy. That is, it’s soothing until I sew the right side of a piece of fabric to the wrong side of another piece. Then I start cursing and may or may not break out the vodka.

I am not a rank beginner, or at least I know more than the average Joe on the street. But I still have lots to learn. Recently I decided I want to branch out into making plush toys. And of course I don’t want to make a teddy bear or bunny. I’m planning on making a pokemon plushie. Not one of the pink, cutesy ones either. I want my own gastly toy to proudly display on my shelf.

 I couldn’t find a pattern for gastly, but a quick search led me to one of the cutest versions I’ve seen so far: http://smileandlead.deviantart.com/art/Gastly-Twin-Plush-299879266 . ~SmileAndLead apparently does pokemon commissions, and it shows. The quality of her work is stunning! If I didn’t want to try this project on my own I would definitely be buying one of her little gastlys. 

So I’ve looked around and made some design choices based on what I’ve seen. For example I don’t want the miasma around gastly to be stuffed or to be made out of sheer, light fabric. Now all I need to do is figure out how to actually make the darn thing. I’ve never sewn a 3d shape before, so some crafty googling is necessary. My first find was a very useful EHow article using long, oval shapes to make a circle. To make a pattern, draw a cross with the long piece for the width of the ball. In the middle of that line, draw the cross piece one sixth of the total width. Then draw in the curves so it looks like a football. Cut out six of these pieces in your fabric, sew together, and voila, perfect sphere.

However, I was a little worried. This beach ball approach made the sphere, but it seemed a little blocky to me. My gastly would either have a line running down its face or seams that might interfere with his huge eyes. I continued to look when I came across this wonderful blog: http://whileshenaps.typepad.com/whileshenaps/. This website is chock full of useful toy designs! If my first toy is a success and I want to continue with similar projects, I’ll definitely come back for inspiration! But the thing I got from this website was how to make a baseball type sphere. If you look at a baseball or tennis ball, you can see it has to lobes connected by a little thin part. She suggests basically that- make two double lobed pieces and sew them together. Leave a bit open, turn inside out like any other project, and stuff. It seems like a smoother sphere than the beach ball design. And while she leaves a neck hole in her project, I can easily make mine one solid piece. 

But the real drawback is if I do the baseball design, I’m going to have to do something to get the purple cloud around his head. Probably cut him in half down the middle so I can sandwich some purple fabric in the middle. I’m thinking of maybe just covering his back with a loose swath of purple fabric to make his cloud look nice and flow-y. I’m sure once I sit down with a piece of paper and sketch this all out it will come together. I mean, I only have three other gigantic sewing projects to work on, my school work and keeping up with my friends. So all in all gastly will probably be done in… two years? Poor gastly.