Vulpix: An Exercise in Creative Thinking

This post could otherwise be entitled: All the Tails. Or, if I were feeling particularly aggravated: All the Freaking Tails. You'll see why soon. 

Just a quick recap: the first installment of this Soft Toy Adventure is found here. The second, in which I detail making Rachel's Cow, is found here. If you don't want to read them, know I had three days to make two soft toys before Christmas. This is the second of those soft toys. 

Vulpix is a Pokemon. One which I have tried to make in soft toy form before and though Sophie loved the Original Vulpix, she was less than satisfied with how I realized the tail. Here was my source image:

Image from here

This time round Sophie had a lot of input into tail design. One of the perks of knowing what you were getting for Christmas I guess. For reference, if you can't tell from the above picture, Vulpix actually has five tails. She evolves into a Pokemon called Nine Tails, and you can probably guess why. I am thankful Sophie has not asked for a Nine Tails toy, and if she ever does, my answer will be a resolute no. But I digress. 

To tackle the problem of the tails, I did some research, mostly on the Menagerie Pattern which came with a variety of tail suggestions (for all the different animals) that I figured I could adjust or manipulate for a Vulpix tail. (On a side note, there is definite potential for a Menagerie Pattern based solely on Pokemon. Just saying). 

My initial attempt was something that looked like this:

And I hoped when I added elastic to the sides, that it would curl appropriately. Which it did. So far so good.

But when we stuffed it, things started to go down hill. 

After consultation with Sophie and a few more tries we ended up with something that looked more like this:

And worked fairly well. I think the elastic version could have been improved, but I was short on time.  Three days to Christmas remember? I post these photos here just in case anyone else is mad enough to attempt making a Vulpix soft toy for their small child and needs tail guidance. After messing around with prototypes for a day, it was time to cut into the real material. Which I had just enough of.

And the tails looked pretty good when all sewn up. They are flat in the below picture, but fluffed up nicely when stuffed.

Tada! Sophie was pretty insistent that the tails be able to move independently of each other, and also be as big as they were supposed to be proportionally to Vulpix's body. I'll be honest, making the tails the right size seems like an ok idea, but in reality, it's not very practical.

Anyway, tails on and everything else sewn up. I had to adjust how to put the whole thing together, because the pattern has you tuck the tail (yes, the usual one tail) inside and sew the base to the body first, and then pull everything the right way out of a small 15cm gap in the back of the creature. But, there was no way all of those tails were fitting inside the Vulpix to start with. So I sewed the back up and half of the base and then hand stitched the rest.

Did that make any sense? I dunno! Hopefully you are not making a Vulpix toy and thus don't need it to make sense anyway. Here is Vulpix in a mostly finished and an un-stuffed state. I was contemplating where to stitch on her facial features (nose and mouth).

Looking good right!? I ended up not being able to find any black embroidery thread, and it was Christmas Eve at this point, so I just went with dark brown. It's faint, but it's totally there (photo at the bottom of this post has the best shot of it). Here is Sophie being excited about stuffing her own Christmas Present.

I still can't get over it. Maybe they were just so excited that it was nearly Christmas? (You can read about Rachel's Cow here, if you haven't already.)

During the stuffing process, we noticed that the tails were a total nightmare acting all independently, so I stitched them together with a quick bit of embroidery thread.

Much better. Later on I also ended up stitching the tails to the back of her body too, but that's another story. The fur/hair/fluffy bits (?) on Vulpix's head were done with the elastic curling tail method, though I realize now if I had made them longer they would have curled more. Oh well. Lesson learnt. She still came together ok. You'll notice that they curl in the same direction as the tails. Just something else Sophie was very specific on.

One last shot of the tails from behind, this is right before I finished the hand sewing to pull the whole thing together. Can you see how BIG those tails are?! Is my alternative title to this blog post beginning to make sense to you!?

Anyway, Sophie loves her new Vulpix and I am still surprised that I was able to make two soft toys of this complexity in three days. No, I will not go into business and try to sell these on Etsy. It's not worth it. 

But I will continue to make these for my daughters, because though I may be a little nuts, that is totally worth it.