When I made my last plushie post with my
JuiceBox Plushie I made for my co-worker, the rest of the team loved it and I decided to give myself a challenge.
Why don't I make enough JuiceBox Plushies for everyone at JuiceBox Games? It started out as creating 16-17 plushies, but I ended up making a total of 20 (since we had new hires along the way and such). So spending about 2-3 hours a day and most times 7-8 hours on weekends, I sewed away and basically started my own personal JuiceBox sweatshop.
Two and a half months later, I completed it just in time for our potluck at work and the response was positive! Since some people have been asking how I made these, here's a very simplified breakdown photos of the process.
1. Cut the pieces out.
It probably took me a good 3-4 days to even measure/cut out these pieces individually.
2. Start Assembly
Since I wanted each piece to look close to identical, I had to focus on one part at a time. The most tedious part was individually sewing on the black strips for the border on the yellow felt. This alone took almost a full month to complete. Again, it wasn't a difficult process, just tedious as each piece had to have the same thickness and treated the same in terms of how much pressure I applied to the thread so they all read nicely. Since I sew the parts inside out (for quality purposes), the hands and arms were especially difficult to turn inside out again because they're so tiny.
3. START STUFFING!
I'm surprised how expensive actual stuffing can be, so to save up on some bucks, I just bought a whole bunch of cotton bags from Target. A couple of my friends also asked how I got each straw to have the same angle, and basically it was all about how much tension there is in the thread when I sew the middle together. Again, this is why I did each part individually so I can focus better.
4. Assemble more pieces together!
After 2 months or so, my desk at home looked like a giant yellow graveyard for felt. You can already see here that each straw was sewed on the top parts while the rest of the body (still inside out) wait in the back in a giant pile. And this was taken after the first guy's been completed. Only 19 more to go!
5. POOF!
And just like that, 20 almost identical hand made JuiceBox Plushies were created and ready to be handed out.
This was a wonderful challenge and I'm very glad I was able to complete it. Pretty proud of the outcome and I'm glad the team loved their JuiceBox swag. In the meantime, I'm going to work on other personal projects, but none of them will involve sewing for a while.
Thanks for reading!!
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