#bashful thylacine

[thylacines-toybox]

Patchouli is helping to brush dirt off some chanterelles...

[fortheloveofjellycats]

Jellycat Bashful Thylacine Stim Board

(Custom-Made Plush by @thylacines-toybox)

Disclaimer: images are not mine unless otherwise stated. Sources listed below for credit.

SENSORY WARNING: Some sources below contain other stim images.

Sources: x | x | x | x | x | x | x | x | x

[thylacines-toybox]

Nettle has found a very long grass stem!

(August 2024)

[thylacines-toybox]

Exploring at Kelburn Estate with Thyme, Patchouli and Nettle in August 2024. One of my first outings with a friend riding on the outside of my new backpack!

Thyme especially enjoyed exploring all the old trees and the glen. It was a very hot day, but we walked up the hill and found an empty party boat, a good place to cool down and enjoy the view! Patchouli and Nettle also found a friend.

[thylacines-toybox]

So I also love thylacines and even though I live in Australia most of the plushies that i can find here are very stiff and made of scratchy fabrics. I’d seen your Jellycat thylacine ages ago and was inspired but struggled to find a bunny that was the right colour and wasn’t horribly expensive. I found this cheap (but in very used condition) Jellycat kangaroo at a thrift store and knew this was my chance.

I changed the ears, tail, changed the stuffing ratio and added weighted beans, embroidered toes on the paws and sewed on stripes made of faux fur. I even made her a tiny bandana. I think it turned out really well!

I’ve never made a plush from scratch before and I am a self-taught hand sewer so while this was a little scary is was not as difficult as I thought it would be. Thank you for the inspiration and the helpful tutorial you posted.

Oh my gosh this is a fantastic mod, nice work! The kangaroo was such a lucky find, it makes an excellent base. Looks like the face was about perfect already, and the big ears and paws and white tummy look so cute! You apparently had more patience for stripes than I did too, hehe.

Thanks for showing me, love to see some more thylacinification being done heh! (Also, so true, plush companies gotta make more soft, fluffy and cuddly thylacines, in fun styles. So many just have smooth fabric or lack of flop...)

[thylacines-toybox]

Nettle got a tiny jumper! It was a knitted Christmas tree decoration found in Oxfam and luckily a great fit for a small bashful. Now we can match too!

[thylacines-toybox]

Making a bunny into a thylacine!

I’m at it again with extreme Jellycat modding! I love my bashful thylacine Patchouli so much, I wanted to have a small version too. This time I thought I’d record the process a bit more!

Plushie surgery under the cut! It’s fairly extensive, including removal and rebuilding of a whole face, so be warned! (It all turns out well in the end though!)

The first step is de-earing the bunny! They stitch these ears in quite firmly (you know how much these bunnies get swung around by the ears!) so it takes quite a lot of unpicking.

One ear gets folded inside out, stitched, trimmed, then stuffed to form a tail!

The second ear gets unpicked entirely, so I’ve just got a single layer of ear fabric. I sew this together with some white fur to make new ears.

Oh, I had to shave this fur down a little to match the shorter fur of the small size! Some extra trimming was needed after sewing pieces on too, especially on the stripes to neaten them up.

Next it’s time to rework the face, unpicking the nose and embroidered mouth, and basically opening up the front of the snout and chin a little bit. With an extra white muzzle piece added, this will help elongate the whole head.

The old eyes need to come out too! I can access the backs of them through the open snout. This plastic washer on the inside needs to be cut off to remove the eye, and the small hole that is left needs a couple stitches to close it up.

A little white fur is used for the muzzle (the shape of this piece is sorta like, a bean with a dart in the bottom…) and stitched nearly all the way around, just leaving an unsewn gap at the top where the nose will go.

A new nose made from an oval of minky, stitched around and drawn up like a little bag around a tiny ball of stuffing. Bashful Jellycats usually have a faux suede nose, but minky doesn’t look too out of place! Other Jellycats can have minky noses.

Nose and ears sewn in place, and new eyes have been fitted in a higher up position than the original eyes, emphasising the snout! (Fitted the eyes by going in through the ear holes before I sewed those in…)

On my medium bashful thylacine I sewed a little dark patch of fur on under the eyes, but I left it out here as it’s just too small and looks fine without. The medium also had a mouth embroidered, but I decided against that here too!

Now time to pattern out stripes… three is fine. Gets the idea across.

This is my least favourite part lol, it’s so tedious… sewing through fur, trying to get the stripes’ positioning and furry edges to look nice and even……. blah.

And finally, small bashful thylacine is done!! Now they just need a name and some accessories :)

[thylacines-toybox]

A little swinging bench just for Nettle? Well no, it's for birds really. It's a bit high to get down from anyway...