Cute Dolls features a fantastic section in the front which is practically a guide for sewing. The "Before You Start" section covers common materials and tools, seam margins, fabric grain, simple stitches, sewing limbs into the seams, and stuffing the plush among other things.
The fabric of choice for the book is jersey cloth. You, of course, can use another fabric if jersey cloth isn't available to you but that may affect how your plush turns out because of thickness and/or stretch.
A sewing machine is recommended by the book for sewing the plush toys but there are also two hand stitches taught in the book - backstitch and "cross-stitch" - and either will work for creating the cute plushies.
A sewing machine is recommended by the book for sewing the plush toys but there are also two hand stitches taught in the book - backstitch and "cross-stitch" - and either will work for creating the cute plushies.
You'll most likely need access to a copier though as most of the patterns should be enlarged a bit for the ideal size. There are a few at 100% already like the tadpole and the spritekin.
The characters featured in the book are all very unique and creative. Each one comes with a little blurb about the character. The one here is about Kidnapper, possibly my favourite character here due to how out of place he seems among the rabbits, sheep, and monkeys.
Next to the character's photo and blurb are the instructions all of which are drawn out for you very clearly. They're super easy to understand and the characters have little bits of speech as their being made. They always seem to have something funny to say.
Next to the character's photo and blurb are the instructions all of which are drawn out for you very clearly. They're super easy to understand and the characters have little bits of speech as their being made. They always seem to have something funny to say.
Especially Liar and Bad Guy.
This is the plush I made using Munky's pattern. I didn't enlarge it to 150% so it's smaller than it's supposed to be. It's also made from a striped dust cloth and not jersey cloth as I don't own any jersey cloth. Munky's design also calls for pellets which I don't own so this little fella's stuffed with polyfil instead. The biggest issue I had was sewing on they eyes. They were just too small and fiddly and annoying to get on. I'm not sure how the photo looks so perfect because these look all sorts of lumpy. After struggling with the eyes, I just used thread alone to sew on the little mouth/nose (I made it and I'm still not sure which it would be).
Overall, I'd give this book a 7 out of 10 because it's great for beginners, it features a large variety of body types, and it's really entertaining to read what the characters are saying but if you don't generally use jersey and don't want to buy it just for this book, your characters may not look right. It also lacks any instruction on the ladder stitch which is a very basic and common stitch that all plush artists should know.
The book looks really cute. I was wondering if I should get one of this books. Are you going to review his other ones? :]
ReplyDeleteThe only other one I have is Cute Stuff but I plan to do that one. If I can get my hands on Fun Dolls, The Cuter Book, or Baby Stuff, I'll do them too but for now I'm way too poor for that. Variety is the spice of life though so I'll be doing tons of my other books too :)
DeleteI have Cute Stuff and Baby Stuff. I really like both of them. They are more geared toward hand sewing. I don't know how to machine sew. I really like the Kidnapper. That's the first time I've seen that character. Thanks for the review!
ReplyDeleteBaby Stuff seems like a really neat book to have but I can see why Kidnapper might have been left out of that one even though he's a really neat character :P
DeleteSewing with a machine is great - except when it jams. But every other time, it's like magic.