(using some felt for this project because it’s what we have on hand, and i’m not interested in purchasing fancier fabric until i know i can do this)
there’s a wealth of tutorials out there. vaguely following this one:
realizing right now (just looking at that thumbnail) that i should have probably done the embroidery work for the face before cutting the face piece out (i’m sure i’ll be able to work around that though ( ← unfounded optimism))
posting this thread in an attempt (hopefully not vain) to keep myself on-pace
Real Genuine Fumos appear to have fully embroidered eyes, which I know I wouldn’t have the patience for
the tutorial above had instructions to embroider just the outlines of the eyes, then cut out some felt pieces to size and hot glue them in. i did not feel good about that approach (not a fan of hot glue tbh)
i found this general face-sewing tutorial (with insipid music) not made by a complete nerd and thought it’s approach seemed more sound. it cuts out felt pieces for the eyes and sews them in place first, then embroiders the highlights and such:
in retrospect i should have probably followed the video’s example of using a marker and a glue stick (to keep the eyes in place), tho the pins seemed to have worked well enough so idk
anyhow, after i cut the eyes out i did a basic sanity check to see if it would look okay:
the sclera (or are they just highlights here?) are triangular instead of circular because i was having too much trouble poking through both layers of felt while embroidering for some reason, and decided to take some ~artistic license~ to make things easier for me
anyhow, if you look at the back here, you can see me improving in real time (CW: plush gore):
i wasn’t expecting to be done with this tonight, but i guess listening to Jeffgerst the Man do his NES Science can be that soothing
anyhow, i’ve been using livesplit to try to keep track of how much time i’ve spent on this so far. i figure with some more experience i’d probably be able to get to this same milestone much more quickly
the fact that this doll is naturally in a sitting posture made this significantly tougher than it needed to be. i’m not the biggest fan of how it turned out, but it works well enough
i found some fabric for the shirt. my current plan is to cut out some marginally larger torso pieces from the plush pattern, then sew them together and cut them up properly
the Canonical shirt design is something like this (front, rear, interior front):
i’m not sure how i’ll be keeping the front layer in place and whatnot, but i know for sure i’m not gonna include a tiny zipper (sorry)
i took this as an opportunity to make the back of the shirt a single piece (unlike the back of the plush)
the shoulders are long enough that i don’t think i’ll bother cutting out pieces of fabric for the sleeves. i think i’ll just flip the shirt inside out, sew the sleeves and sides of the shirt shut, and then cut off the excess and hem the edges
thinking that the neckline needs to be slightly lower (quite doable)
for the white edge thing i think i’ll just use some ribbon (TODO: check if we have any white ribbon in the house). i don’t think i’ll bother doing the thing where the collar is raised on one side though (fun fact: if i was nerdy enough to know how to do it, i’d have a 3D model of this character that used some portal rendering magic between her hair and the back of the head so that if you looked at it one way it would look the the high collar extended all the way around, while if you looked at it the other way it would look the the high collar did not exist (TODO: make a diagram to explain what i mean here))
still dunno what i’ll do for the buttons
good night, and may the vod of jeff gerstmann’s science bless my concentration tomorrow
it’s been a few days (i was helping build a shed), but i got the buttons sewn on the shirt.
i researched some options and felt like 4mm buttons would be a good size for this.
due to my irrational distaste for online shopping, i ended up going to a brick and mortar store that didn’t have exactly what i wanted, so i ended up with these “sew-on snaps”
not ideal looking (i’d prefer 3 buttons vertically at this scale), but it’s Good Enough for me
at this point i consider this “done.” i timed myself for the first 30 hours until i accidentally hit some hotkey for livesplit that added all pause durations to the timer, which ballooned the timer to 190 hours, making it useless. in total, i’d estimate that this project took me 40-45 hours total, but if i were to use a sewing machine i could likely reduce that by a large amount.
anyhow, accounting for the cost of materials and labor, that’ll be $1000 dollars. any takers?