Finally can reveal the project I was working on between commission rounds: Linda! She was a birthday gift. Linda was quite the beast to work on! Shep, who had commissioned me for Audi in the past, approached me about this project months ago for their partner's birthday. Linda looked like a fun project and I'm an absolute sucker for repeat customers! It is the best compliment I could ask for. While Linda's neck deviates heavily from my base pattern, it wasn't something too crazy. And since I had patterned similar feet to hers for Raziv, I was willing to take on the project! Despite having most of the foot pattern from a previous plush, I needed to pattern the sickle claw. It also made it easier to pattern the scales on the feet for embroidery. One thing I wanted to do for this plush was make 3D transitions from "feathers" to "scales". This involved making the white areas double sided where it met the pink areas of the pattern. It makes a nice effect! It was a nice change of pace to have a character that wasn't very heavy on color transitions or applique! I still had Marshal when I was working on Linda, which made for some absolutely hilarious photos with him in the background. It took many iterations to pattern her neck and head! We decided to simplify the shape somewhat to align more with my pattern proportions. We started by overlaying her reference on a side view of the plush. That way I can print out the reference to scale. After I make an iteration of the prototype I can take a picture of it and overlay the reference photo with it semi-transparent to check the shapes. Finally had a shape I was happy with! Lining up her head embroidery. I wanted the top part of her beak to be 3D as well. So the beak consists of one whole beak and a 2nd double-sided layer to create the overlapping effect. Her "hair" are feathers, the top of which was sewn in mohawk-style and the side ones were hand-sewn on separately with a 3D curl and top-stitching to add dimension. Linda has very long eyelashes so I decided to go with 3D eyelashes made from suede. They are sewn into the eye embroidery. Linda's test face, embroidery for her head and arms, and claws. Head, pre-feathers and ears! The 3D transition on Linda's arms. Linda has thin antennae coming from her ears. We decided to go with floral wire. I was really nervous to do her tail due to the size. Luckily the base of the tail is just a simple shape. But the feathers would have to be hand-sewn on. FLOP Stuffed and ready for her hair and tail feathers!
I didn't take pictures of testing out her tail. I wanted to avoid using wire, but it ended up being necessary. No matter how I built the feathers they were just too heavy for her thin tail to stay upright. So her main tail had thicker wire running through it. But I went through several iterations:
I ended up with individual feathers lined with quilt batting with soft wire running through the middle. I also top-stitched on the spine of the feather through the middle to give them some dimension. Linda is very different from anything I've made before, but it was a great experience to make her! See her individual pics below~
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