In the last couple of months I’ve gotten into plush making, rebelling against the injustice of my favorite characters not getting official nuigurumis. I had to scour the internet and pick up a lot of info from here and there, so I decided to list all the steps to make a plush for the sake of fellow fans who want to make their little blorbos. So here goes! ٩(^ᗜ^ )و ´-
- Choose your skin fabric and hair fabric(s). Usually the fabrics used to make the skin of the dolls have 1-1.5mm long hair, while the fabrics for hair can be anything from 3-5mm to super long 8+ mm. In the below pic, the rightmost 2 are for skin and the rest are for hair.
As for material, there are many choices: minky, velboa, fleece, faux fur etc. and it’s easy to get a little confused because of language barriers.
- The English speaking shops tend to use the terms minky, cuddle, cuddle fleece, mochi minky, velboa for plush fabrics. There are too many shops to list here (I only know of shannon fabrics’ cuddle line), either go to a local craft store or use google.
- The Japanese ones use soft boa (ソフトボア), crystal boa (クリスタルボア ), mochi boa (もちボア) tricot (トリコット), nylex (ナイレックス) (usually for skin fabric), boa (ボア), fur (ファー), fake fur (フェイクファー) (usually for hair fabric). I have bought from little closet, nunotome and nuigurumi-fabric. The quality of the first two shops’ fabrics was very good (see above image), haven’t got my package from the third yet. However all of these shops needed the use of a proxy (I used Zenmarket), they don’t accept overseas payment methods. There are some Rakuten shops that might accept foreign credit cards, but they don’t ship internationally so you’d still need a proxy or forwarding service.
- The chinese websites like shopee and taobao confused me, they tend to have a long repetitive names, searching “水晶絨布” or “件水晶超柔” yielded results. Plushies are called “棉花娃娃” there so you can try that too. A much easier option is aliexpress, there you can just search “cotton doll fabric” or “plush doll fabric” and get a lot of results. I’ve mainly bought stuff from Hopen textiles and Cotton Doll material store, both of which seemed to be of as good quality as the JP ones 90% of the time, but much cheaper in both price and shipping. I mostly buy from there now. EDIT: I recently splurged on taobao with the help of a chinese speaking friend and superbuy, omg the fabrics are like 1/5th of the aliexpress prices. The only thing that might hold you back is the international shipping cost (the above ali stores often offer free shipping but higher price), however you’re going to make a big profit as long as you buy multiples. One warning if you want to use superbuy: ALWAYS use the Guangdong warehouse! HK warehouse is the devil
- Choose your embroidery threads. I recommend buying a good brand’s threads like DMC, but you can also use non-brand threads as long you confirm that their color doesn’t bleed and the threads don’t fray or break too much. I’ve used both and got similarly good results, which the non brand being softer to touch but a little more easier to fray.
- Get some good embroidery needles. Sewing needles you have at home might not be up to the task if their holes are too thin the embroidery threads and/or their points aren’t sharp enough.
- Choose a base pattern for your plushie and print it out, stick the paper on something rigid like thin cardboard/cardstock. Here’s what I did with the cover of a writing pad.
I’m linking some free pattern links that I use, but you can buy them too. Often JP and CN plushie shops will give you patterns as a freebie when you buy their select products (like little closet’s nui-no-moto doll bodies or cotton doll material store’s beginner kit). There are many books about making plushies, but all of the ones that are about making human plushies (in my knowledge) are in JP. For English speakers, I would suggest you follow the first pattern in the below list because piyopicco at youtube has made in depth English subtitled tutorial using it.- JinnyLan at youtube (pattern link included in video description)
- MiNi盒子 detailed tutorial in Chinese
- Ito_0234 picture instructions on how to combine head and body parts
- chocohajiro
- tacute (all patterns include tutorial in JP)
- maromayu`
- Customize base pattern as per need in photoshop and print your custom pattern on A4 paper using the scale to fit option, most patterns are made for that size (people who can’t use photoshop can print out the base pattern and draw on it I guess). Personally I
- use official chibis as reference image
- use pen tool to draw paths and stroke them
- also draw with my graphic tablet sometimes
- only draw on one side and mirror the other side to maintain symmetry
- Place a transparent embroidery film on either the printed custom pattern or your computer monitor/tablet (I don’t have a tablet so I tilt my laptop so its monitor is horizontal lmao) and trace the design with a water or heat erasable pen (I got mine from aliexpress that looked like pen refills lol).
Do not use regular pens with permanent ink, and if your film stretches like mine does, make sure you are placing it tightly with some tape. - Attach a fusible interfacing on the back of your skin fabric, it should only be big enough to cover the part where you will embroider. Optional if your fabric is thick but important if it’s thin where there is risk of threads on the back of the fabric being visible.
- Take your printed custom pattern and cut it in 2 parts: hair pattern = upper half of head + bangs, face pattern = face below bangs. While cutting the hair pattern cut 2mm below the bangs. 2mm space not needed for hair that hangs in front of face/sticks out of the head. (look at the rightmost piece in the pic of step 4)
- Arrange the different fabrics. First, take your hair fabric and place the face pattern on it. If it’s a furry fabric, make sure the direction of the hair nap/ pile is as indicated in pattern (you can figure it out by smoothing your hand over the fabric). Draw around the pattern on the fabric and cut it out. Place hair fabric on top of skin fabric and embroidery film on top of the hair fabric, making sure to align the drawing on the film with the bangs (personally I find this hard to do because my embroidery film stretches a lot).
- Secure the fabrics together with basting stitch and use threads to mark the face. I put one thread at the point of the dart triangle at the top of the head, and another at the mid point of the chin at the very bottom.
- Embroider the face, first stitching along the lines you drew on the film using outline/stem stitch (backstitch for tiny parts) and then filling up the pattern with satin stitch (long and short can be used for bigger areas but isn’t a must). This piyopicco video has very detailed instructions if you’re new to doll face embroidery. You can either embroider the bangs line like I have or let them flow freely.
- Take out the fabrics from the hoop and cut out and remove the embroidery film. You can cut/gently tear out most of the film, but often you’ll still have to wash the remnants away. afterwards.
Pat dry the fabrics with a towel and then use a dryer, but don’t use too high heat or do it from too close. You may need to brush the fur with your fingers as you dry it, see this reference video. Once it’s no longer sopping wet and the fibers are back to being somewhat fluffy, let the fabric dry over time, it takes a while depending on your weather. I usually put it near a fan. - Once fully dry, place the head part of your base pattern on the back of your skin fabric and mark around it. Cut the skin and body fabric outside of the area you’ve marked, making sure to keep a seam allowance and cut a little extra like the orange line on the pic below (I drew it with my finger so it’s a bit uneven, but you should try to make it as even as possible).
If your character has long hair, you may need to cut hair and skin fabric in different amounts separately. In above pic you can somewhat see the extra lines showing bangs that are different from the face shape line. - Place the body parts of the base pattern on skin fabric (reuse the parts you cut out if possible) and cut them out, once again keeping a seam allowance (see second pic in step 16).
- Place the back hair part of the base pattern on hair fabric (reuse the parts you cut out if possible) and cut it out, once again keeping a seam allowance. Note that your hair pattern may be different from the default one, I had to change a lot of things for this project as my plush had multilayered hair. Usually it’s simpler.
- Sew all the parts together, doing it separately for head and body. Usually the head part is almost always the same (little closet’s blog has some very neat illustrations), but the body part usually depends on the instructions of the person who made the pattern. I suggest you watch the second part of the piyopicco video I mentioned previously.
Unless you have prior experience, I don’t suggest trying to sew 10 cm doll parts using sewing machine. For 20 cm and above it’s more doable. For hand sewing, sewing pins are your greatest friend.
- Combine the head and body. Some videos suggest you fill the body and head with filling first and then ladder stitch them together, but I like piyopicco’s method better where the body is put inside the head to sew the neck parts together and then flipped inside out. It’s hard but done right it feels super stable.
- Stuff plush with good quality stuffing (polyfill/pp cotton). Tear stuffing into small pieces and insert to avoid clumping. Make a butt by sticking a needle from crotch to where you want the hips to start and pulling the thread (see piyopicco video for details).
- Complete! ૮ ˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶ ა<3
I hope this helped someone (♡ˊ͈ ꒳ ˋ͈) I would also recommend checking out this free plush sewing ebook by cholyknight for many more tips. It’s not for humanoid plushies but the basics are the same everywhere.
If you have questions, feel free to drop a comment, but please remember that I started learning all this only like, 2-3 months ago so I’m pretty much a beginner myself (,,>﹏<,,)
Otome Heaven 
