Plush Writeup - Aki the Dragon Pandeena

I absolutely LOVE this character!

I opened for all types of commissions this summer, and I could not resist picking this adorable boy. I've been wanting to make a floppy, lying quadruped pattern for a long time and this was the perfect opportunity. My client wanted him to be BIG, and I was happy to oblige! I have never made anything this size (and I admit, I underestimated how big he would come out) but I'm thrilled with the result!

Somehow it was my first time seeing Madshy's artwork (and I'm sad I've never seen it before!) I love this character's design! Fall is my favorite season and I just loved the color gradient on the tail, which would look fantastic in faux fur. I also wanted the ridge on his back, his chest, and details around his face to be fur. With my new obsession with mochi minky, I wanted to make his horns, nose, whiskers, and claws out of it, and... I had some big plans for a new style of paw pad.

He would also have his collar and his plush koi friend, which he would be able to hold in his paws and mouth with magnets!

I planned on him being 30"+ long, excluding the tail (despite the labeling on the photo). 

First up was patterning the body! It had been a loooong time since I've patterned a quad, and I've never patterned something so floppy before.

First version, not pretty as usual. I used my method of attaching appendages to pattern the limbs, by sewing them separately and then pinning them on. This way I didn't have to keep remaking the body itself before I got the limbs the way I wanted.

While I wanted the limbs to lay flat on the surface when the plush was set down, I didn't like how they looked so static when the plush was picked up. It looked awkward and unnatural.

So I started tilting them at an angle, so they would droop down a bit when held up. I still wanted the front leg to have a bend, rather than be straight to avoid extra wrinkles when the plush would be set down.

It took several more revisions but eventually I got the limbs at an angle and thickness that I wanted both when held and lying down. But now the body was too thin.

I traced the way the limbs met the body onto the fabric, so now I could sew them onto the plush as intended for the next revision.

The body was thickened, which was done by both widening the belly gusset, adding the fur gusset on top, and making the body a bit taller. The limbs were also sewn on according to how the seams were drawn on.

Time to pattern the head!

Oh lord, I'm falling in love already!

I used my go-to anthro head pattern, but made the muzzle a little shorter.  His head was too large in comparison with his body, but that was an easy fix overall.

​With only a test body and head, this dude already had a TON of personality.

I really liked this size that he ended up being - perfect for holding in your arms! I definitely want to make some at this size in the future - but Aki needed to be LARGE!

I made another test head to check embroidery, applique, horn attachment, etc. The horns were clearly wonky and the attachment area needed to be adjusted, But I was happy with how it was looking overall.  The only adjustment I wanted to make was bringing the eyes in a little closer, which meant narrowing the gusset right in that area.

We still wanted him to be a little chunkier and a bit longer, as well. His head was also still too big.

​His tail would also be lengthened, but that would be taken care of in the final plush.

So, one more body test needed to be done. But before then - I couldn't help but see how the floppiness was working out, and oh... be still my heart!!!

This little boy was too cute.

The floppiness was working really well! His limbs and tail were weighted with polypellets. Most of his body was stuffed with mochi stuffing, which works REALLY well for floppy plush. And his head was still stuffed with traditional polyfill to push out the round shape.

​But first... I had some paw pads to try out!

Lord oh lord am I obsessed with mochi minky. I wish it wasn't so hard to source right now, because I want to use it for EVERYTHING.

When I first bought it, I wanted to try making super puffy paw pads with it like I've seen on some fursuits. The first try was SUPER PROMISING! I wanted adjust the shape more, but the overall effect and softness was perfect.

I am OBSESSED.

Eventually, I will make a tutorial on how to do these!

With one last body test, now he was nice and thick!! I only wanted to lengthen his neck a bit, but we were good to move on to the final plush!

But for now... MORE PICTURES! He is just so photogenic, even as a prototype!

But first... Back to the dyeing board.

Aki's lightest color is an extremely light warm grey, and that color just did not exist. So, I had to make it myself. And oh boy, was it a nightmare.

I started with a Rit Dyemore color formula called 'mist' that I really liked. It was too strong, so it just needed to come out lighter, which meant to leave it in for a shorter time. It used royal purple and chocolate brown. But no matter how little dye I used and how little I left it in, it was coming out too blue/cool.

So I decided to try plain frost grey dye, which also was coming out basically just light blue, no matter how little I left it in for. I was using very small amounts of dye too (<1 tsp). And due to leaving it in for a very short amount of time, the backing wasn't dyeing, but only the nap.

So I tried another color formula that mixed frost grey and sandstone. And... it came out green tinted. I should have seen this coming, since I had the same issue trying to use sandstone to dye the mochi minky for my Kasuga Ichiban plush.

I was pretty much at my wit's end, when my fellow plush maker ShatteredNeedle made the suggestion to use orange and graphite Rit Dyemore to get a light warm grey. Since they have to dye pretty much all their alova suede due to the lack of colors, they have a lot of experience in dyeing! So... I got some graphite and orange dye.

I started with a 3:1 ratio of graphite to orange (3/4 tsp graphite and 1/4 tsp orange). The one on the left was left in for 10 seconds, and the tone on the right for 30 seconds. So, still too cool, but we can just add more orange dye.

With a 1:1 ratio of graphite to orange (1/4 tsp each) the warm color was finally starting to arrive! But we needed it to be warmer.

I added another 1/4 tsp of orange to the dye bath to bring the ratio to 2:1 orange to graphite. I knew it would make the dye bath too strong, but I didn't want to waste all the water and dye. I left the sample in for only 30 seconds. The nap dyed a color that I liked, but the backing was orange, which I found was an effect of leaving minky in for a very short amount of time. This meant the dye needed to be VERY DILUTED. So I broke out a syringe and used the smallest increment I could, keeping a 2:1 ratio.

I left in the fabric for about 3 minutes and got a beautiful light warm grey! FINALLY!

After a week of being stuck in dyeing hell, I could finally start the plush!

(If you'd like a tutorial on dyeing minky, you can check out the one I made here!)

My test pattern got enlarged by about 40% to bring him to 30" from paw to paw. This meant that his body was so large that each side needed to be hooped 3 times to do all the applique! It took a whole weekend to do everything.

​Oh boy, did I underestimate how large he would be in real life. I mean, thinking about how big 30" is one thing, but seeing it in real life (and then adding on a gigantic tail to that) is a whole other thing!
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Most of the faux fur for Aki was sourced from Howl Fabric, with the medium red and platinum coming from Big Z, and the tan fabric was something I had on hand (which I believe is Shannon camel).
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Aki's elbow fluff were "gussets" of faux fur sewn into that area so that they were thick and not just a tiny tuft sticking out of the seam.

MORE MOCHI MINKY! I decided to make the inside of his ears mochi, which I thought was a nice contrast. Faux fur was top stitched onto the mochi for fluffy ears (top stitching avoids extra bulk). The backing is trimmed away to the stitching, and the fur hides it.

His head came together pretty easily. I purposely did not do a satin stitch underneath the beige of his eyes, since it's actually a gradient on his reference, which we chose to omit for simplicity. But leaving out the satin stitch helps sell the gradient effect from afar rather than have a thick satin stitch there. It's still secure, though!

And MOCHIMOCHIMOCHIMOCHI!! His horns, inner ears, nose, whiskers, and teeth are all mochi minky.

Aki FLOP!

This was the hardest one to take cause he is just SO BIG! He is 4 feet long, including his tail!

Once again he was stuffed with polypellets, mochi stuffing, and polyfill in the head.

He also had magnets attached to his front paws and mouth for... reasons :)

​And... OH LAWD, HE COMIN!

He is such a big, cute boy!!!

(My bed is king sized, for reference)

​He is LORGE! But so cute!

Big ol' paws!

Aki was so unwieldy due to his size that I found the best way to hand sew on his nose and whiskers was to prop him up on my ironing board! The weight distribution allowed him to hold on entirely on his own!

With all the hand sewing done, time to make his collar and koi fish!

His collar was individual pieces of quilting cotton all sewn together. I applied interfacing to the back for strength, folded it, sewed it, flipped it out, ironed it, was about to attach the buckle....

... And realized I got the order wrong 🤦‍♀️ you can see how the blue colors are out of line on the edges!

Luckily I was able to seam rip it all and correct it, but this was NOT something I had wanted to redo!

The colors look really nice on Aki!

The leaf charms on the collar were made from leather.  To add some interest, I tooled some grooves into the leaves where the spines would be.

I wanted them to be shiny and glittery! I started with a layer of metallic paint and then followed up with glitter paint, which is basically just clear glue with glitter in it. I finished them with varnish to seal everything.

Pretty!

Next up... the reason for the magnets! His friend koi fish!

I started with this pattern by neon-juma on DeviantART. It's a great pattern.

​I designed all the applique and embroidery and went ahead and executed it!

I used snow white for the fish, which I normally don't like using because it's so "printer paper"y. But for a fish, I thought it was perfect.

I also used tomato minky, which is discontinued - it always kills me to use discontinued colors, but it was perfect for him.

FishChamp!

This little guy cracks me up. I just love the expression the open mouth makes! His inside mouth and barbels are mochi minky. He has plastic safety eyes.

​With that... Aki was done!

It took me two days to take all his photos and videos because he's just so darn PHOTOGENIC!
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And you can watch a 'making of' video below!​
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