Despaira's Bosom

In keeping with my efforts of making stuff that befits my group's pen&paper roleplaying characters, I decided to make something else for my female tiefling. Not being female myself, the next thing that came to mind was, well, something obvious - as in obvious to anyone who lays eyes on her, which is part of her style (or rather modus operandi).

Anyway, I decided to make her (or myself) a set of breasts, slightyly covered up of course. At first I was considering using latex for the skin, even pondering the use of some kind of professional casting material to use on a mold, but eventually it hit me - I am not trying to make it look real, but make it fun. It is supposed to represent a character, and since it's a fantasy character, it should probably exaggerate.

So i thought... Muppet. Felt was the way to go, both easy to work with as well as cheap (compared to the casting idea). While some shrinks out there would probably have a field day with this, here's what I did.

(On a side note, many images were made with my camera's sepia-filter since the normal mode would not deliver enough details with the red pieces of felt).

And I should also note that at this point, this project is meant to be worn using safety pins to afix it to normal clothing. I have considered seqing it to a red T-Shirt for ease of wearing.

And please, if you have questions or comments or - unlikely as it may seem - found spelling errors, please let me know!

Materials:
- red and black felt
- red and black yarn
- stuffing

Tools:
- scissors/cutter
- sewing machine

Despaira is supposed to be... well... for lack of a more fitting word, voluptuous. She's also a thief and a fraudulent fortune teller. You get the picture. This, along with some practital considerations, influenced the shape of things - in this case, the shape and size of her breasts.

At first, I was going for something natural, i.e. a natural breast-shape which turned out to be rather complicated for the felt novice, at least in my opinion. Also, at that point I was trying to avoid visible seams. Then I decided to go overboard as described above, and the obvious solution for all my worries arose - use half-balls and make use the muppet-look to turn seams into an element of style. Or something like that.

Anyway, I searched for a template for a ball and found one here: 

I printed the template and cut out the six pieces required to make a ball, as shown.

Once I had the two halves finished (sewed together and turned to produce the result seen above) I placed them on red felt to check how they would look. Here I decided how to arrange them, i.e. at what angle to place the seams. 

As you can see, taking pictured red on red does not really convey much depth, let alone detail.

Next I guessed, I mean I estimated the diameter of two half-balls and made a template going by the shape of the felt pieces. As it turned out they were not exactly round but a little elongated. I cut out the two backing pieces and sewed them to the half-balls, leaving about 1" to 1 1/2" out to turn them back out.

Here I started taking pictures using the sepia filter, I hope they work for you.

I apologize for not having too many pictures for this step. Basically what I did was stuffing the two half-balls with your generic plushy stuffing agent, in this case the filling of an old pillow.

I then sewed the opening shut, no need for it to look pretty, it will be hidden beneath her clothes.

The next step is to attach the breasts to the upper body, in this case a large piece of red felt. Placing the two breasts in a pleasing fashion - I chose to angle the seams slightly outward - I tacked them to the base piece, then sewed them to it all around. 

Of course, despite her disposition, Despaira does wear clothes. I took a piece of black felt and completely failed to take pictures of this step...

I cut out a rectangular piece, hemmed it and added a... well... hard to explain, and I'm afraid the image does not explain it properly. In order to have the dress be roughly fitting, I folded the piece down the middle and seqed about 2" to a triangle on the upper side. I made sure the seam was sturdy. Then I unfolded it and squashed it into the shape you see in the picture, adding a few stitches to the sides to keep it sturdy enough.

In order to make the transition from her red skin to mine less distuptive, I took two triangular pieces of black felt, hemmed them and sewed them together the way you can see in the picture. Placing them on top of the clothed breasts, I tacked the pieces together.

Now all thas is left to do is to fix this piece to your shirt of sweater - either sewing it on or using safety pins.

And always remember, have fun with anything you make!