While I’ve created stuffed animals before, usually I’d reference other patterns and sketch out my own based off of those,, which meant I didn’t know exactly how the plush would turn out proportionally until it was finished. There were sometimes errors and miscalculations I wouldn’t realize until the end, and I wanted to find a solution to that for future projects and patterns. I’ve done some 3D modeling and animation in the past and worked with UVs to create materials. Similar to sewing patterns, they served as a blueprint for the final model. By modeling a plush in 3D, I could see the final form, and then unwrap the UVs to get a 2D pattern. I reached out to Stef Savoy to collaborate on this, since she had more experience modeling in 3D than I had.
Collaboration and Planning
I asked Stef to create any sort of animal-like design for the plushie but didn’t set any other sort of requirements. She sent me these sketches and asked if they would work for sewing. I really liked that sort of realistic animal but something off look created by the ultra-long neck and asked for more iterations in that direction.
On my end, I intended to embroider over the already print fabric to add some additional texture. I knew that once I had the finalized pattern, I could cut out the exact pieces and know definitively they would match up with the 3D model, which left me with more room to try out other fabric techniques. I could freely embroider over the cut pieces without having to worry about the proportions of the pattern pieces and if they matched up
Stef and I worked through a couple different 3D models as we tried to find a medium between what was possible through the fantasy of 3D and the reality of a physical object. V1 would have required a lot of pattern pieces with all the curves, and I didn’t want there to be so many seams, especially when there was already going to be a lot of embroidery. I was a bit concerned about the physics of v2, as it would probably tip over and not achieve that sort of stiff shape implied by the 3D model. We settled on v3, and she sent me over the 3D model.
Stef sent me a very low poly model to give me maximum editing capabilities. I smoothed out and cleaned up the model in Maya, then split the UVs along the proposed seams. For reference, I visited some toy stores to look at plushies and see where they usually split seams.
Cutting Out Pattern Pieces
I had no printer and thanks to COVID, no access to public printers, so I had to improvise. I used my laptop screen as a lightbox to trace the patterns onto the fabric.
To do so, I saved the unwrapped UVs as an image and brought them into Photoshop, where I stroked the edges with bright red and made them thicker and easier to see. I overlaid the fabric on top of the laptop screen and turned the brightness all the way up so that I could see the edges of the pattern through the fabric. Using a fabric pencil, I traced the shapes (about .5 inch out from the lines for seam allowance) onto the fabric.
UVs in Maya
Goose Pattern
Backpack Pattern
Adding Texture through Embroidery
After cutting out the pattern pieces, I embroidered each individual piece. The original pattern was already pretty busy, so I just traced over the pattern with similar colored embroidery floss. I tried to space out the embroidery somewhat evenly to maximize the contrast in textures.
After embroidering, I sewed together all the pattern pieces. This was familiar territory and pretty straightforward. I left one of the seams near the middle partially unsewn so that I could use the hole to stuff the plush.
I made the backpack out of a different sturdier fabric to make it more functional as a bag. I picked up this yellow fabric and double layered it – I ended up making the beak out of this fabric too to add some coherency.
Future Uses
I also scaled the pattern down slightly to make a smaller version of this plush, and the proportions remained consistent and workable.
Final Piece
Comparison to 3D model