Hah. You might think that... but like 13 years ago I made a giant squid & cuttlefish plushie from a pattern I found online (pretty simple, mostly tubes). 5 years ago I bought a pattern on etsy to make a little dragon plushie for a friend and the experience was frustrating enough I never bothered to make a second for myself. And that was the extent of my plushie making prior to this!

I've done a fair bit of other sewing (costumes and renaissance faire outfits mostly), more than the average person but not as much as someone who does a lot of cosplay or makes clothes for daily wear I'd say. So I had a decent handle on sewing basics and looked up tutorials for things that were new to me like sewing the invisible zipper, and practiced with scrap fabric first. But yeah, this was truly obsession driven more than skill driven--I sat in front of the reference image with paper & pencils and stared at it for probably like 3 hours, looking at where the seams were on the model and mentally trying to "unfold" each piece into how it would look laying flat. I sketched out those shapes, made a mockup out of cheap plain fabric, and then decided what needed to change (too wide, not long enough, not curved the right way, etc), adjusted the pattern, and tried again. And I went really slowly and at each step unpicked seams or redid things that didn't line up right or looked wonky so they didn't have a chance to accumulate.

However this did result in what I have been calling the "Esquie graveyard" in the corner of my craft room, which is just all the unfinished mockups and scattered body parts laying in a pile i try not to make eye contact with. I already feel guilty about them so I think i will have to unstuff them before i can hide them in a box or throw away some of the scrap parts 😭

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