Tag: Fox

Kitsune Approximation

Making a Vulpix/Kitsune mascot for a friend’s birthday

A friend of mine had their birthday at the start of November, so I needed a gift. I’m not sure how it started, but I’ve generally gifted her self-made things over the years. So when the birthday came around this year, that was the intention again. However, I first needed to come up with a plan. Since we were supposed to start a new roleplaying campaign, I figured I’d try to make a representation of our planned character species, a Kitsune. Because I was entirely unsure how to do a fox person, I settled on a pokemon. SewDesuNe/CholyKnight has a free pattern available of a Vulpix. As Vulpix is quite fox-like and also has multiple tails, it seemed like a good option.

The original pattern has a weird hair roll thing on the head, and tiny curled tails. That hair was left off and I decided to draft my own tails, so there are three somewhat curved tails and two that are more upright. It was quite a fast sew, and interesting construction where you sew a front and a back, attach those together and then sew on arms, legs and tails separately. I think I started sewing down his features on Friday evening and sewed him together on Saturday evening, maybe?

There patterns are always lovely to work with as everything fits together so well. The fabric is generally more of a pain, but that’s because it sheds like there is no tomorrow. Again, the lint roller was my best friend while working on this. However, it’s all worth it in the end because they are so lovely and soft and ready for cuddling!

Red Birds and Foxes

A year ago, I added a piece of light coloured fabric with grey leaf-ish things and little deer, birds, squirrels and foxes to the stash. On the hunt for a project, I re-discovered this fabric and decided to finally make (at least part of it) into a top of some sort.

Enter Simplicity 9, model 59 minus ruffle. This pattern came in size 38-40 at the smallest. In general, that tends to be too big. However, I hoped it would work anyway without resizing the pattern beforehand – spoiler alert: dumb choice.

In order to get it to fit, I made a 2 cm pleat at the back, ending at the small of my back. The shoulders were lowered 1.5 cm. I redrew the neckline at the front and back to correspond to the original size. So in total I probably managed to shave of more than 8 cm or so. I now like the fit a lot better. The fabric does crease like crazy and I don’t like ironing, so this is why you see it in all its wrinkly glory.

The fabric is super cute though and those five buttons also came from the stash. The original pattern had more buttons, but I was not going to let such a good match in buttons go to waste, so five it was. The button bands might have a little to much interfacing for the thickness of the fabric, but all in all, it wears well and it’s very cute. So far, so good!

Foxy!

Sometimes when you browse Pinterest for some other free pattern, something catches your eye. For me, that happened a while ago, with this one to be precise. It was a super cute, free, adorable pattern of a fox made by Misty’s Whimsies. You can find the pattern here. So I printed the pattern, and it sat around in an envelope for a few months. You see, I couldn’t decide what fabric to make it out off. In the end, I followed the cues from the designer and picked a red quilting type fabric with white polkadots as the main fabric, and a grey fabric with white stars as the contrast. The black nose was eventually made out of a bit of bias tape.. none of the fabrics in my stash were a black quilting type cotton, for some reason.

It sewed up pretty quickly over 3 evenings, the instructions were good, the notches matched and I was extremely happy with the pattern. So far, the only issue I’ve found is that mine doesn’t ‘sit & stay’ very well. Perhaps it needs some heavier butt-stuffing or something. Who knows.. All in all, it’s cute and the pattern worked really well!