Skybison Baby

Last week I had to finish up this little skybison baby in a rush, as the friend of mine who requested this had a birthday party on Saturday. I’ve been sort of putting this up but the birthday was such a good opportunity to give it to her that I decided to hurry it along. I’m glad I did, she was really happy, as handing in the commission was totally on a whim for her and she kind of forgot about it, so it was even more of a surprise than I anticipated

I actually spent a lot of time hunting for the perfect fabric for this project and hence have a kinda big stack of it lying about now. It had to be a really fluffy one and I wanted to have it a really soft off-white that had to go with the brown I wanted to go with so I was kind off limited in my options which didn’t work very well with the very limited colour range off plush where I live Luckily I could use up some of my fabrics from my stash for the belly and the face, as I had a really nice soft nicky from my totoro sweater, a metallic jersey from an old platypus project and random alcantara which I’ve used for the first jacket I’ve sewn (wonder if that still fits me...)

The pattern I basically eyeballed. I knew I wanted to be really close to the reference, but it varied a lot depending on the picture you looked at, so I took a few artistic liberties, especially concerning the amounts of stripes on his back. I’ve learned the hard way that it’s better for me to work off a good pattern I’ve really thought through all the way then improvise it on the go. I have a pretty good feelings for geometry and patterns, but when it comes to the executing projects, I usually power through a lot so I have to have a solid base to work from and have to have a plan, otherwise I tend to make rush decisions that don’t work out as well as I’d like to. It worked out fairly well for this one except for the muzzle, which did turn out slightly more ruffled than I intended, and the eyes which aren’t perfectly symmetrical because I sewed them on in the subway to the party . I first sketched out the pattern, which actually was done month ago and then I tranferred it onto paper in the right measurements (again eyeballing them in about the size I needed) carefully labelling every part with which part it was and how often I needed it in each fabric.

Then came the cutting. And admittedly, it was tedious to pay attention to the direction of the hair in every single piece I cut, cutting it out in a way that I wouldn’t cut away any of the hair I might possibly need  later on and then lie it out on my kitchen table so I wouldn’t confuse any of the pieces. This I think really saved a lot of time and frustration for me (and made for really nice pictures too )

When I had everything cut up and ready, it came to deciding the order of sewing. Luckily I had thought this out before too, so it was just a matter of pinning it together (again paying attention to tucking in all the fur) and then hand sewing it all together. There were so many individual little pieces that I figured hand-sewing would actually be faster and tidier than doing it on the sewing machine. The only exception to this were the panels on the belly, which were made from alcantara and hand-stitching them would not have looked as tidy as I’d have liked it to (my machine didn’t like the fabric though and decided to skip stitches ever so often so I had to redo parts of it by hand anyways).

Making the arrow on the back was definitely the most rewarding part of the sewing process. I’ve never made anything like it and was so happy how it turned out! And I was really really hesitant to move on to the face as I feared it would mess everything up (Which ALWAYS happens, when I haven’t prepared everything beforehand...). At that point I hadn’t fully decided how to approach it and it was a bit tricky as there were different fabrics which all had a different stretch so in the end I opted for keeping the eye part and sewing the rest of the face in fake fur as the shape would be much more consistent and puffing the muzzled up would actually be easier when I would just sew it on top. So then I had a solid base to work from. At Friday way past midnight. And Saturday was a working day.

On the morning in the subway I decided to take things easy; there were only the (already premade) feet to be sewn on, the muzzle, the nose and the (already premade) eyes. So I spent my lunchbreak doing that. But I only managed the feet and the upper lip and as I really wanted the pieces to sit exactly where I wanted to, I opted to stay in a bit after work and finish up as much as I could there. So I sat there with all the colleagues who were already in weekend mode, sitting around with their beer stitching away in a frantic hurry, because I was already late for the party XD and turns out the colleague of mine who set next to me was a massive avatar fan XD He kept stealing glances at the little skybison and when someone asked what i was actually making, he chimed in “it’s appa!” almost in awe! XD And when I was leaving I gave the toy to him to hold for a bit and he was very happy about that too

So when I left, I had the nose and the eyes left to sew on. Good amount of sewing for a subway trip. XD The elderly man who sat across from me was a bit buffled I attempted it though tbh. Maybe also due to the military pocket knife I used to do the cutting XD Due to my stress the eyes, as I’ve already mentioned came out a bit wonky, but I think it’s not too noticeable and he still looks really adorable! I had opted to paint the eyes too and had also brought the colours with me but unfortunately I completely ran out of time for that too XD