#mr skitters

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Don't talk to me or my son ever again...

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BEHOLD. The Goob Squad™

Both using the Cotton Kitten pattern by Daftpatience. I wanna make more of these little guys in the future, they're about the size of my hand, and I have so many buttons that are the perfect size for the eyes.

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Never uploaded the gooby version I made of Mr. Skitters. I used the Cotton Kitten pattern from Daftpatience. His stripes, face, and toe beans were all hand-embroidered. I tried moving his mouth up and out a little more than the original pattern suggested in an attempt to make him more "smug," but it doesn't quite come across imo. The combination of struggling to keep the embroidery even, the paw patches being whipstitched on, and the fabric used, this guy is SKRUNKLY. It sorta adds to his charm, in a way...

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His tail on it's own was one of the most difficult parts of this whole project. The character, Mr. Skitters, has a bendy straw for a tail. I wanted to make sure that you could see "into" the tail, and really push the straw illusion. I used a Choly Knight Mimikyu tail pattern upscaled at 140%. I probably could have just had the single bend on it, but for some reason I was set on it being as bendy as possible. I hand embroidered the stripes on both tail pattern pieces. I went ahead and stitched the tail together, leaving both the top and bottom ends open, trimmed and turned it, and left it a tube. Once I stuffed it I decided that it was too long, and I didn't really like how the bottom of the tail came out, so I cut off about an inch or so excess and tucked the raw edges into the tail. At the top, I drafted and cut out a little thin plastic disk for structure, and basted the raw edges of the top of the tail down. I then made a brown disk in felt, ideal because it's stiffer and holds its shape better, and tucked it into the open tail hole on top of the plastic. I then ladder stitched the disk in, hiding the seam allowance. Once it was all stitched in, I added a final straight stitch around the hang-off at the top to give it a little more of an "edge." I "sculpted" the ridges to make it a "bendy straw" by locking my stitch, making a running stitch and pulling tight, and then wrapping the thread a few more times per ridge, and locking my stitch back into the fabric. I'm not 100% happy with how the tail came out, but it gets the effect across, I think.

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This delightful creature was a kitbash, the most convoluted one I've done so far.

For his body, I used a Choly Knight Luna & Artemis Pattern, upscaled to 150%. I cut two sets of the front and back pieces of the front paws in both white and orange, and modified them to make just his paws orange.

His head base and the poly pellet pouch is from the Cinamoroll Plush Pattern (the medium size, specifically.)

The tail base is from the Mimikyu Plush Pattern, upscaled at 140% (I also cut it down from the base when I attached it to the body, so it's also modified.)

His forehead fluff was from the Eeveelution Espeon Plush, but upsized a little by increasing the seam allowance.

His cheek fluff, (which I have dubbed his "cheek meat") was from the Cheshire Cat Pattern as a base and modified.

The :3 mouth I just traced from the Witch Kitty Plush Pattern, but just removed the nose

I originally just wanted to make cone patterns for his ears, but I wasn't really satisfied with my attempts, and I was losing steam, so I just took the front piece from the ear in the Bluey Pattern, and extended it about a half an inch.

His eye bases, irises, tail "hole" and orange patches were drafted by hand.

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One of the interesting things about this project is that I tried a new technique for the first time. I saw a video online (9rotto on Instagram) where they used freezer paper to cut out felt patterns. Even though this is fleece, I decided to give it a shot, since tracing out and cutting patterns in fleece ALWAYS manage to get warped, plus marking certain colors in fleece has been an issue for me in the past. (stained one project with colored chalk, and another project the fabric was too dark to use marker.)

Not only did it work, it was the easiest and most satisfying time I've ever had cutting out fleece. Essentially, you use freezer paper, tracing out your patterns on the matte side. I used gel pen, which felt the smoothest while being the most precise. Once it's traced, you iron the paper on to your fabric shiny side down, and iron on a low to medium heat, which makes the paper stick temporarily. I didn't find this technique to leave any sort of residue on the fabric, but you could always wash it when you're done if you're worried about it. I found that leaving the blank space on the freezer paper, and cutting through both the fabric and the paper at the same time made it easier to get the shapes even, however that could be brutal on your fabric scissors, and can waste a bit of fabric. You could also cut the freezer paper out and iron it piece by piece to the fabric, allowing you to get spacing as close as possible, as long as you include the seam allowance in your pattern pieces. Either method is valid and helpful, depends on the person. You can reuse the freezer paper patterns about once or twice more, if you'd like. You could also label the pieces and leave the freezer paper on the fabric until you need it in order to keep your pieces organized

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His face took a little longer than I would have liked, honestly. I went through a few different iterations, as pictured here, since I didn't have the same rich dark purple that Max (the character's owner) uses in her lineart in fleece. I cut out the patterns for his eyes, both in a navy blue and the light purple I owned, but determined to get a more accurate color, I tried using felt, and whip stitched around the entire eye, and tried a brick/long and short stitch to fill in the pupil. (couldn't keep it consistent enough.) Unfortunately, I hated this result, and scrapped it. My main concern was if I used the light purple for the outline and pupil of the eye, the fleece iris pieces would stick too far out and give the illusion that the white/turquoise was the pupil instead.

As a sort of compromise, I used felt for the irises, but stitched embroidery thread over the whole thing to hide the texture of the craft felt, and hopefully improve quality by decreasing pilling. I think I might reuse this technique, as I really like the "textural" difference between the iris and pupil.

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For his toe beans, I went ahead and traced out the paw patterns, excluding seam allowance, and drew out about where I wanted the toes to be. I used a box cutter and carefully cut the paper to be a template. I placed it on the pattern pieces and filled in the shapes with white chalk. I used a satin stitch on the pad of his paw after tracing the shape out with a backstitch, and just used three or four stitches per toe bean. I don't think I'll use a satin stitch for the pads again, though. The backstitch I did traced the shape really well, but the satin stitch kinda warped the shapes, since the fleece is stretchy, and even though the shapes are fairly small, there's still a risk of the threads catching on something.

I kinda wish I used a different thread, since the day after I started the embroidery, I got to the store and found a thread that contrasted better, but a friend of mine pointed out that I should just commit to finishing projects rather than just making them "perfect." Eh, it is what it is. I'll use the newer thread I found in another project someday.