CholyKnight – Page 2 – Hopefully Creative

Turtle Duck

This time the duck has a shell and four feet. He has become the elusive Turtle Duck!

As alluded to in the previous post, the (Turtle) Duck pattern by CholyKnight also has a Turtle Duck. In contrast to regular ducks, turtle ducks do not actually exist in nature. They are creatures that were created for the Avatar the Last Airbender universe. It’s effectively a duck with a turtle shell on its back and four feet instead of two. It also required different pieces for the head that allowed a stripe to be formed.

I basically attempted to follow the colour palette as it was on the pattern. A beige for the body, green for the shell, orange for the feet, sand for the beak and a light brown for the head-stripe. Of course my stash composition limited the selection somewhat, so the body is off-white, the shell is more turquoise than true green and the beak is the same colour as the stripe, ochre.

I had to put the shell on a few times before it would line up satisfactorily. This was because both the body and the shell didn’t turn out symmetrical when I sewed them – user error. So when I put the shell on, it looked all crooked. Some forceful maneuvering of the filling in the body and another attempt at shelling and it was as good as it was going to get. This one also has a pellet pouch in the back, but it isn’t as good as keeping the turtle duck from falling face first. I guess I put the head a little too far forward. If I put him on a slight incline, he’s perfectly fine though.

While I didn’t plan on being repetitive, it’s happening and the next plush is a turtle. This one will not be based on the same pattern though, so I guess that’s something?

Ducky!

Imitating nature with a white duck.

Back to regular programming with wellness fleece, felt features and CholyKnight free patterns. This time it was the (Turtle) Duck pattern. On the front it had an example with a white duck, which I thought was lovely. I have seen white ducks around, so I figured I’d stay pretty close to the original.

It’s got an ochre beak and orange feet. I don’t own any wellness fleece that is more yellow than this ochre, so this is what I use. I’m of course still a little on the lookout for yellow fleece, but I’m also not in a hurry. Shouldn’t add to the stash if this whole thing is supposed to be a stash-busting exercise, right. Anyway, it came together easily and has a pellet pouch located near its rear. That’s to keep him upright as his head would otherwise completely ruin the center of gravity and he’d be on his face the whole time.

I think he’s cute, even if his eyes are a little demonic, and I really like him. Ducks are always awesome.

Next up will be this guy’s very close relative, mr. Turtle Duck.

Fennec Fox

Little fennec fox plush completed.

I’m still not over the whole ‘make a plushie zoo’-phase of making. So this is another one that got finished recently. This is the Fennec Fox by Sew Desu Ne/CholyKnight. Another nice free pattern that came together pretty smoothly. The eyebrows on mine are a little.. odd looking, but apart from that, it’s all good.

I had to make his head a little smaller than the original pattern because I fused his face on a little crooked. If I’d sew him as he should have been, his face would have been extremely lopsided. I also sewed most of his bottom by hand because the pulling by the machine had distorted certain bits along the way. He’s quite soft and has some pellets in a little pouch in the bottom to keep him stable. So now I’m also slowly using up the bag of pellets that’s been hanging out in my sewing room. Maybe, one day, the hoard will be reduced back to a stash size. I just don’t think it’ll be soon.

Narwhal!

So quick, so easy, so narwhal

Stash reduction is the name of game at the moment.

I’ve selected a good few toy patterns and am determined to make enough plushies to allow the pushy-fabric box to actually close again. Next up is a really tiny, really easy Narwhal!

Again, I used a free pattern by SewDesuNe/CholyKnight, appropriately called Narwhal Plush. He’s only got 4 pattern pieces and a total 8 pieces of plush fabric. So not very much of the stash was used, but at least some has a new shape now.

I like the way they had me made the tusk. It’s a small cone where you use small gathering stitches to give it that signature spiral look. Next up should be a Fennec Fox. I’ve got all the pieces cut, it just needs to be assembled.

Penguin!

A bite-size penguin has been added to the family.

As mentioned in Kevin the Owl, I’ve somehow amassed a decent stash of cuddly fabric that I need to sew up. So yesterday after work, I decided to take another stab at it. This would involve a really cute free penguin pattern from Sew Desu Ne/Cholyknight. It’s a penguin lying on its tummy with an adorable tail sticking up. He’s made of black, white and ochre cuddly fabric and some black and white felt.

Last night, I sewed on the eyes and prepared the face by adding the black forehead and sewing that down. Then this morning, the rest of him got sewn together in about 2 hours. I’m for sure not the fastest sewer, but it was a nice process nonetheless. Most of the pattern came together easily apart from adding the tummy. I think I stretched the fabric a little so I had to really manipulate it to fit and then I went back for a bit that was not very oval-shaped anymore. Still, he worked out wonderfully well.

He’s quite small, which is nice. The one thing I changed from the pattern is that I didn’t add pink blush ovals under his eyes. I don’t like pink and he’s cute enough as is. I’m not at all sure what I’ll do with him, but he’ll probably be hanging out in my house for the foreseeable future.

New Shoulder Friend

When the perfect shoulder dragon pattern comes your way, you have no choice but to craft a new friend!

Have you ever had that moment that you spot a pattern for something online and you just.. had to have it? I had that Monday a week ago when I found the pattern of a plushy shoulder dragon by Choly Knight. In the basket it went and out of the printer it came. All the pieces were cut and taped together, and some were printed again so I could optimize my layout. The main colour was blue, it’s belly would be a light blue, then green claws and a white spine-spikes. Coincidentally: my new best friend is a lint roller and I don’t think my vacuum will forgive me if I force it to suck up another bit of blue fuzz.

I then started the process of putting my new friend together. I chose to make a western style dragon with clawed legs, and the pointy spine-spikes. From the free add-on pattern, I chose the toothless style horns and face-spikes. He’s got the lizard style eyes and the lizard scales on his forehead and legs. The pattern is extremely comprehensive and easy to follow. My machine didn’t particularly like the enormous amount of layers along the spine-wing attachment, but he got through it. This was also the first time I used armature wire, and it wasn’t nearly as scary as I thought it would be.

So last Saturday at around 7 o’clock, Pjotr the Shoulder Dragon was completed. He’s a slightly sub-par scarf, but still a lot warmer than nothing. So far, he’s been received with universal acclaim and he’s literally the cutest thing in my house.

Brian the Big Brained Derpy Kraken

Making a little stuffed kraken that turned out more adorable than angry.

Way back when I purchased the dragon backpack pattern from CholyKnight, I also got a pattern for a Kraken plush and an Octopus/Animal plush. On Friday, I finally decided to make the adorable little Kraken.

I’d already purchased some dotted minky while getting the dragon fabrics precisely for the purpose of making something octopus-related. I thought the dots could perfectly represent suckers. So I got my grey fabric and some of the yellow dotted stuff and set out to make a Kraken with ‘angry eyes’. When I sent a picture of the finished plush to a friend of mine, he immediately suggested to name him ‘Brian’. Or even better, ‘Brian the bigbrained bracken’ [sic]. He also told me that mine is a little more derpy than the original, with which I totally agree. The pattern does not specify placement for the angry eyes so I sort of.. guessed based on where the regular eyes were positioned. Turns out that I put them a little too close together and now he looks derpy instead of angry.

He’s still magnificent and really soft. The eyes and spots are made of felt and stuck on with some vliesofix. Then I handstitched around them to secure in place permanently. The handstitching was done in a few hours while watching/listening to some old climbing competitions on YouTube, very relaxing. I may need to make another Kraken because I have some more dotted stuff hanging out in my fabric hoard.

Taking a Dragon on a Walk

Now that I’m working from home, I need to see more friends on a daily basis. So I decided to make a friend who wouldn’t be influenced by quarantine. I bought the dragon backpack pattern from CholyKnight in December and never dared to actually start. It took until the stay-home-order and throwing the budget out the window to get going.

Getting the fabric was the biggest mental hurdle. Initially I wanted minky, which was what the pattern make advised. However, I was only able to find flat minky in Chinese webshops and not in any local-ish ones. There was some that had raised bumps, and I didn’t think a bumpy dragon would look good. In the end, I settled on something called wellness fleece and got a meter each of bright red, dark grey and black. Where the colours would go was to be the next hurdle. After some deliberation, the back was going to be grey, the belly red and the nails and horns black.

The pattern pieces were taped and cut from the fabric. My floor was COMPLETELY covered in fluff. Fluff everywhere. I only made two changes to the pattern and the first was to change the shape of the wings. There are four types of wings included in the pattern but none of them tickled my fancy. So I googled toothless wings and drafted a pattern based on that. I also decided that I wanted the wing-spine to be a different colour, so I cut that and figured out the order of operations. I was amazed that my sewing machine managed to get through 6 layers of fleece and a layer of foam.

I didn’t have many problems when sewing this new friend, although there were some. According to the pattern, an ‘advanced skill’ was to install a hidden tail pocket with an invisible zipper. This posed no problems. For some reason however, just basting on the bottom straps was the thing I had to rip out multiple times. Very frustrating.

The second change I made was to change the straps. The original pattern includes straps that are just webbing, but that isn’t very comfortable if you ask me. Therefore, I decided to draft some curved straps, based on the straps on my larp backpack. I even used the same fabric as I used for the bottom of those straps. The plan was originally to use back webbing and strap adjusters, but the local sewing shop only had 2 cm and 3 cm wide webbing and 2.5 cm adjusters so that wasn’t going to work. I was very happy to find 2.5 cm wide red webbing in some deep dark recesses of my hoard. That was sewn on top of the straps with some dense zigzag.

Finally, I managed to put the remainer of my new friend together – taking some extra care around the straps to make sure they weren’t sewn into the seam. Cursing a little here and there when there were lots of layers and finally handsewing the last details in place. Once he was done, I took him on an outing to the supermarket to show him life outside my house. He’s probably going to be quite useful since his main pocket is quite large, I can fit most of my underarm in there.

So far, he’s wonderful and I hope that I can show him around to more people.

Tag: CholyKnight