Review: Making a Plush Murloc

My boyfriend and I followed Bamatick’s plush murloc pattern this weekend to make our very own stuffed murloc. Overall it went really well, and I made just a few slight modifications to make the process easier for this not-so-savvy-sewer girl.

More pictures of the process in the gallery.

First of all, I used squares of felt instead of fleece because it was easier to find in the colors I wanted and much cheaper. (especially since I wasn’t sure how successful I’d be with it or how it would turn out.) For the body parts, which included the arms/legs/hands/feet and stomach, I used gray. For the fins, (both dorsal and appendage fins) I used purple. If you’re following the pattern just as it is when you print it out and not enlarging it at all, you’ll need:

* 2 pieces of gray felt for all body parts
* 1 piece of purple felt for the dorsal fin/appendage fins
* 1 piece of black felt for the mouth
* 1 piece of white felt for the teeth
* 1 piece of green felt for the contrast detail color on body/tail

The other materials I used were all listed on the pattern’s materials list:
* 2 buttons for the eyes
* small piece of cardboard for the mouth (explained below)
* a bag of polyfiber fill (stuffing)
* black and white thread

I used black thread on everything except the teeth, when I used white thread. With a fairly dark gray color felt and dark purple, the black thread hid rather nicely.

When making the mouth, I cut a small piece of carboard about the same size as the mouth (slightly smaller) and actually sewed the mouth right down the middle into the cardboard’s crease to help make the mouth sturdy and “bend” open and closed like a real mouth.

Since there’s no true pattern for making the teeth, I used the same mouth shaped pattern (the round one) and cut it out of white. Then I followed the mouth shape while making jagged cuts from the top of the mouth shape for the upper teeth, and from the bottom of the mouth shape when making the bottom set of teeth, that way I knew they’d fit perfectly into the mouth when I was done.

I also cut out two dorsal fin pieces instead of just one and sewed them together, turned ‘em inside out and stuffed it so that my dorsal fin had some shape and body to it. Once everything was said and done and I was ready to attach my stuffed dorsal fin, I felt it was too long and so I ended up cutting the last “bend” of it off and sewing the cut end closed. This way the dorsal fin started at the top of the head between the eyes and ended when it hit the tail.

Another slight modification I did was that I used “Tacky” glue (craft glue) to glue on my body and tail contrast color details (the spots along the body and the design on the tail) instead of sewing because I thought my stitches looked ugly and it would look better that way. I think on a larger scale, sewing will look fine, but my detail pieces were so small that the stitches just looked bad.

I plan to make a larger murloc now, because I think it’d be a little easier for us non-experienced sewers to complete. The original scale gets a little tough if you want to work inside-out when you get working on those little hands, feet, and arms. They’re so thin and the feet are so tiny and fragile that I had to resort leaving those as they were instead of turning them inside out, so my murloc isn’t as “nice” looking as it could be, and bares its stitches outward on those pieces. A larger scale will make it easier to turn those items inside out and hide all of the stitches. Then again, this trouble might have been because I used felt instead of fleece and perhaps it’s not as strong as fleece or my stitches just weren’t good enough. (I haven’t really done any major sewing since high school home ec class, with the exception of sewing a few buttons back onto my shirts from time to time.)

The only thing I think would’ve been a bit more helpful was to have some explanations on how to put the pattern pieces together or some pictures of the pieces assembled to know where to begin. In the hopes that it might help someone else with their future plush murlocs, I put together a paper version of a murloc with the pattern pieces and took some photos of it to show you how everything logically fits together. Remember that when you’re putting together your actual pieces of fabric like this, you want the “wrong” side of the fabric facing out, and the “good” side of the fabric needs to be facing in. (After you sew, you’ll be flipping the pieces inside out and you’ll want the best side of the fabric to be on the outside and show after you’ve flipped.) Since I was using felt, there was no such thing as a good or bad side since both are the same. This made it a little easier on me, too.

I’d just like to say that this project was way fun, and I thank my boyfriend for all of his help along the way. He helped every step by cutting out pieces for me and even helping me to sew. I’m not sure I’d have figured out the logistics of putting it all together inside out without him! His advice and methods are what made this possible and the reason why our plush murloc turned out so well. It was also a fun way to spend the afternoon and evening along with some movies.

And of course, this plush wouldn’t have been possible without the fantastic murloc pattern by Bamatick. Special thanks for sharing the open source pattern freely so that others could make their own murloc!

I took pictures throughout the process of making my “version 1″ plush murloc and put them up with finished plush murloc photos in my Gallery. To find them, click MENU, WORLD OF WARCRAFT, then PLUSH MURLOC VERSION 1. I am currently, at the time of this writing, working on a larger scale murloc which I will call “version 2″ … check back in a few days to see how it turned out. UPDATE 10/29/06: “version 2″ is complete, and you can find pictures of the finished product also in my gallery.

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