The first full-body plushies are available in my store!! I picked Qifrey and Olruggio as my first featured characters. 🤗

I depicted them in their casual outfits and love how silly they look sprawled out on their tummies in this cute, round, exceptionally squishable shape. 😆

THEY SQUEAK WHEN YOU SQUEEZE THEM!!

In my shop here: Qifrey | Olruggio

There are other keychains & stickers & things available featuring them as well. 😊 What other characters in this plush shape would you like to see next?

There were two manufacturers I recently tested plush items from; the first was Wooacry and the other is Vograce!

Vograce is a bit more well-known as manufacturer of convention artist booth-style merchandise, since they have been around for longer. Just like Wooacry, Vograce also has a SMETA certification ensuring ethical labor practices & fair wages, and an FSC certification for their paper and wooden products that ensures environmental sustainability.

Things are a bit more open-ended when you submit designs to Vograce compared to Wooacry. With these character plushies on Vograce, you can add any sew-on details you like, such as ears, hair tufts, ponytails, wings, and tails. On Wooacry, you are limited to the ear & tail styles that are selectable in the listing and cannot restyle them yourself (they provide a decent spread of kitty ears & tails, bunny ears & tails, etc., but you can’t make a custom shape for your character’s unique ponytail or dragon wings or something).

This open-ended customization leads to a change in the upload process between them as well. On Vograce, the file you upload must be in PSD format with its layers intact, the reason being that you need to have created enough room for bleed as well as indicating the sewing lines for those custom sew-on pieces yourself. It can be tricky to get the right bleed amount and make some vectored outlines if you aren’t familiar with the tools in your art software. So there’s a bit of a trade-off of more complicated file preparation if you want fully customizable 3-dimensional extra bits on your plush when you go through Vograce, as opposed to the simpler upload process of Wooacry (where you can add basic animal ears and tails but none of your own shapes).

Tbh, the communication with the Vograce team was a little odd… they ask you to include a mockup in the PSD file you upload, which I did, and they still got something wrong when they showed me the “here’s how it will look, what do you think?” mockup from their end (the bunny tails were backwards, with the shading facing in rather than being visible on the back). 😐 Like, what was the point of me putting time & energy into making a mockup at all if you were going to make your own mockup, and incorrectly at that…? Oh well, I’m grateful that they sent that message because I could point it out and correct them, but even just that little bit of back-and-forth communication caused a longer delay before production started. If I can avoid it, I’d prefer to stick with ordering items from Wooacry in the future instead of Vograce just because they’ve got their process so streamlined (an advantage of having only those basic animal ears/tails to choose from – the whole team is familiar with working with them and there’s no chance at all of extra bits or bobs to worry about being sewn backwards or upside down).

Anyway, here are the pics of the plushies I designed!

Subjects: Eloise (the bunnygirl) and Rosie (the pink-haired guy), both are player-created characters from Xenoblade Chronicles X.
Product: Custom Stuffed Toy Keychains Plush Toy keychain [sic; this is what the product is called on Vograce’s website lol]

Even after the small hiccup during production, I LOVE how these little guys came out. THEY ARE SO SILLY LOL. I carry my little pink guy around with me even just moving around the house. He sits next to me while I am working at my computer and I hold him while I am watching TV and I just squish sqiush squimsh his big silly face.

Since the bunnygirl got ears & tail sew-ons, I went ahead and gave the other guy ears & tail as well, just to make them match and because how could I resist making my gwumpy guy into a cute bunny?? Eloise also gets to wear her ears and hibiscus accessory simultaneously, which is impossible in the game since you can only wear one headgear at a time. Such is the beauty of custom products with full creative freedom!

Here they are from the back:

Those are the bunny tails that apparently were too confusing in my mockup… 😐 And the light gradient shading that caused the problem in the first place ended up being barely visible at all on the physical product in the end… 😅 Such ado over nothing at all.

Anyway, if you want chibi character plushies in this shape, you’ve got to go through Vograce for now.

But wouldn’t you believe it; on THE VERY DAY before I received these in the mail, Wooacry announced that they will also have chibi character plushes like these available soon, although the overall shape is a bit different:

Wooacry’s version looks like the head is less wide, with more definition for the jaw line (there’s a whole extra piece of fabric for the neck/chin), and a larger body with a more rounded shape to the arms compared to Vograce’s tiny starfish-shaped body.

I’m grateful that Wooacry is adding this because I’ll be able to have all of my chibi plushie dreams fulfilled through them rather than struggling with Vograce to make my own sew lines in the PSD file and needing to make corrections during production. I like so many of Wooacry’s other products that, once this new printed plush is available, I can get basically everything that I want through them rather than splitting orders between two manufacturers.

I’m really looking forward to when they make this available! I’ll probably make more Xenoblade characters to test it out! 😆

In just a single day, I sewed this extremely cute and pretty skirt in a dusty pink color and classical, vintage-looking print – I thought it would be perfect for wearing on Thanksgiving!

Here is the finished skirt!!
It has a high waist and is incredibly full in shape.

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This is a close-up of the fabric –
a classical-looking toile print covered in BUNNIES!!
From afar, you can hardly tell that there are bunnies there at all.

They are secret bunnies.

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Now I’ll let you know how I made it!!

These three incredibly simple, rectangular shapes are all you need to cut out.
Cotton fabric comes in aboout 45″ wide, folded at the middle.
For rectangular pieces like these, all you do is measure the length down for each piece
and cut allllll the way across that 45″-ish width.

Using twice the amount of length that the waistband has
is what makes the skirt so fluffy and full!!

I like this method more than making a circle skirt pattern,
because the entire cut of fabric gets used without ANY scraps,
AND you don’t have the problem where your print is upside down at the back.

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The front & back panels get seamed together to make one huge “tube”-like shape,
then hemmed along the bottom.
In the above picture, I’m using lazy box-pleat-like gathers to match up the width
of the front + back skirt pieces with the waistband.
However, I do not iron the box-pleats down,
because I want it to fall like ruffles and not actual pleats.

Oh, and I always sew wrong-sides-together first, since I use French seams all the time
so that all of the seams are extremely sturdy and finished-looking on the inside.

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Here is the “after” of the above picture – the waistband
and the two skirt panels all attached!!
The waistband is about to be folded over at the top,
with a channel for elastic to go through ONLY on the back.
The front will be laying flat – that’s what gives it the high-waisted skirt appearance!

You can also see in this picture that while I am spending all of these hours sewing,
I keep myself entertained by watching Youtube vids of video games. :p
For this particular project, it was the Best Friends playing Super Mario RPG.

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In just one afternoon, I had finished practically an entire skirt!!
The lace details are simple – just lengths of lace sewn on in easy straight lines.
Actually, in the above pic, the bottom row of lace is pinned on
and not actually sewn yet.
The buttons are sen on by hand.  By the way –

Look at these tiny bunny buttons!!!

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Since I took a little break after making so much progress in the above pics,
it gave me time to decide that I wanted to scoot the bottom row of lace
up by a couple of inches before finally sewing it in place.
Stepping back for an hour (or day) is usually so beneficial!!

I’m so excited to have something this classical-looking and cute.
It looks like something that Liz Lisa would produce, and I never thought
that I’d own anything as pretty as anything of theirs.
I’m so excited to wear this for Thanksgiving
and any other coords I want to create with it!!

Hello friends!! ヾ(＠°▽°＠)ﾉ  Today I will share how I made a very cute and pastel Hello Kitty skirt for fairy-kei!!  It is very ruffly and cute!!  I made some changes to it while I worked, so you will also see how I fix things on the fly so that I like them better~

There aren’t any pattern pieces needed for this – the pieces are all rectangles!

Here are my fabric choices –
some cute coordinating fabrics with Hello Kitty designs in pastel colors!
The pink gingham will be our ‘main’ fabric choice
while the squares will be contrast pieces

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I’m measuring and marking the main fabric
about 14 inches down, making my marks on the wrong side
so that I do not ruin the pretty pattern~

This kind of skirt is incredibly simple.
Cotton fabric like this opens up to about 45″ across when unfolded,
so all I’m doing is cutting an entire piece of that 45″ length
that is 14″ wide.

This makes a skirt that is ‘miniskirt’-like, as the finished photos show.
When I want to make a very full skirt such as for Lolita,
I would do TWO full 45″ pieces that are cut to the length that I want the skirt to be.

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The contrast piece gets several marks made down it,
but it is opened up to 45″ and the whole width is being used,
just like the other piece.
Since this will be the ruffles along the bottom and it needs to be fuller
than the main skirt piece, I cut two rows of it.
And then, a third row that will serve as the skirt’s waistband.
(I end up abandoning the idea for a waistband later and removing it,
so you do not see a waistband in the finished photo at the top of the page.)

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Here is my single piece of 45″ x 14″ main fabric,
and three strips of 45″ x 4″ or 5″ contrast
(the width of the ruffles is up to your preference for how long you’d like them to be!).

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Now I’m pinning one strip of the contrast along the top of the main fabric
to serve as the waistband.  It looks like I have my pins on the incorrect side
by putting them on the right side of the fabric, but this is my preference
because I French seam everything so that they are neat and finished on the inside.

Anyway, in the end I removed this waistband,
so even after putting the time & effort into pinning and sewing it,
you’re going to see me take it apart again several steps from now. ・°・(ノД｀)・°・

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The waistband and main fabric are French seamed,
and you can see my pins along the side
which will be the vertical seam at the back of the skirt!

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Moving on to the next pieces,
the two strips that will form the ruffles get pinned together at both ends,
so that they make one loooooong strip.

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Here are the ends of the strip sewn together.

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Then, the time-consuming part is folding over both sides of those loooong edges
and hemming them so that they are neat.

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I was lucky to get a ruffle foot with my machine,
so here I am running a ruffling stitch 1″ down from the top of the strip.

Alternatively, you can do this by hand by running a hand needle over and under
and gathering as you go, or by making a straight seam by machine
and slowly pushing the fabric under the needle to gather it.

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The ruffled strip gets pinned along the bottom hem of the main skirt
(btw the main skirt gets a hem along the bottom…).

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As you pin you will probably have to keep gathering by hand
and pinning evenly, overlapping the ruffles when needed
to get them down to size for the skirt.

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Even if it ends up using a LOT of pins, it’s worth it!

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Now I’m sewing the gathered ruffles along the bottom of the skirt for real.

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Pretty neat!!

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Now, the top of the waistband gets folded over to make a channel for
elastic to go through.  It needs to be wide enough to fit the elastic
and rolled under slightly for a neat finish.
Sew riiight along the very edge of the folded-under part.

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Elastic is easy to push through if you attach a safety pin on one end.
This is how super neat the waistband and its elastic looks when done!

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This skirt is finished!
It’s technically wearable right now,
but I decided at this point that I didn’t like the shape of it.
If I’d used twice as much width for the main pink fabric,
then it would look cute because it would flare out,
but with the waistband and main fabric being the same width,
it just looks weirdly shapeless.

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I slept on it before doing so, but finally decided that the waistband had to go.

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I pulled the elastic out of it too, and folded over the top of the main piece
to make a new elastic channel, and recycled the same piece of elastic.

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There we go – this shape is much cuter!!

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Now to add details!!
Get out all of your favorite ribbon and trimmings and lay stuff out,
deciding what would look nice and where.

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Pin your preferred details in place and sew them down.

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I even sewed down ribbin bows in a T-shape across their center.
Clear nail polish is awesome for dabbing on the ends of cut ribbon
to keep it from fraying.

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Here are all of the details done!!
The skirt is finished!!

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The blue bow at the top is cute and visible if your top raises enough to show it…

…but it looks cute with a top that hangs below the waistband, too!!

I am happy with this project even through the mistakes I made with it!
I needed to make those mistakes with this skirt in order to learn from them.
I learned that 1 length of 45″ wide fabric is fine for this miniskirt-like look,
but that I should use twice that much if I want a full, ruffly skirt.

Thankfully, even this style of skirt is fine for Fairy-kei,
because its rules are so lenient!

I am still able to enjoy this adorable skirt, and I LOVE its ruffles and bows!!

Here is an incredibly easy way to DIY a t-shirt to add some contrasting color to the sides and make your sleeves slouchier!!  It has the added benefit of snipping away that underarm part of the t-shirt that might be damaged or worn-out from sweat or deodorant.  You can repair an old favorite t-shirt and make it wearable again!!

Here is my selected t-shirt: a super comfy and slightly oversized grey heather shirt
with floral hearts that have the appearance of being applique’d on~
Wearing this shirt soooo much has really worn out the underarms…
It’s really embarrassing sharing this photo!!  But I am doing so to show you that
you don’t have to be embarrassed either, because this damage is fixable.

The floral fabric on the left is what we’re going to DIY with,
and the yellow shirt on the right is another shirt that I wanted to do
a similar method with, so think of it as a preview for a future post!

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I used pins to mark out the curve I’m going to be cutting along.
There was no super scientific measuring done here –
I only ‘outlined’ the damaged area in a neatly curved way and extended it down.

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snip snop!
This part is nerve-wracking, because this is the part where you start going,
“Oh my god, I’m cutting into my favorite shirt, what am I doing?!”

the snip snop has been done.

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Fold the shirt in half length-wise to cut an identical, symmetrical curve
on the other side.

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(Um, don’t be like me… iron your fabric before using it for any project.)

Here, the cut-out pieces are laid over the fabric so that we can trace the same shape.
You want it against a folded edge so that you’re cutting through two layers.
Also, nudge the piece over further to the right than mine appears here.
There shouldn’t be any pieces hanging off the folded edge.

Also, you will only be cutting along the RIGHT side.
The left side (where the fold is) will remain straight.
It looks like excess fabric, but this is
what makes the new shirt slouchy and loose and cozy!

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What you can’t see in this picture is all of the pins holding this in place on the inside.
I temporarily pinned it in and turned it right side out for this picture,
to test how it would look and to make sure I cut a correctly-sized piece.

So, this is a rough preview of how it will look when it’s done!

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Here are those pins on the inside.

These photos are a bit old and I am very late in sharing them,
and at the time I did this project I always placed pins in
at a parallel line to the edge… now I place them perpendicularly, lol.

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If you open up the shape like this (awkwardly),
you can see how it fits into both the front and back sides of the shirt.

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Fold the edge over to line it up with the sleeve.
(Roll it under one more time than this, unlike my photo here that leaves the raw edge out…)

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Here’s the other way to tell that this project is old…
BECAUSE I SEWED THIS BY HAND!!
If you love yourself, do this kind of project with a machine.
But, at the same time, the fact that I did it by hand is proof that it can be done.
You CAN do it even if you don’t have access to a machine.
Just be prepared for the hours of involvement
and that you may spend 2 or even 3 days on this…

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The photo above showed me using orange thread,
but that was because the thread would be visible on the outside
and I thought the contrasting orange would be cute on the sleeve~
For the rest, I used grey.  Just backstitch aaaaall the way up and back down.

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Here it is flipped right side out again, this time sewn for real!!

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Iron the seam to flatten it neatly, and you are done!!!!
This old favorite t-shirt is repaired and dolled up with extra cuteness,
so I can continue wearing it without shame~

Even with the hand sewing and all of the raw edges that I left,
the shirt is perfectly wearable and can even be safely washed.
Stitches are sturdier than you think!!

It goes to show you that you can be messy and slow in your projects,
and they will still turn out successful.

Sewing is so forgiving and rewarding!!