Fibre Art Moth Sculpture

This instructable will take you through the steps you need to make a plush moth scultpure!

Materials:

• Paper and pencil
• Fabric for wings (1 or 2 different, plain or patterned but ideally flat)
• Faux fur (ideally long pile but short will work if you want a different look)
• Patterned or textured fabric for details (optional)
• Thread
• Craft or armature wire
• 2 Black soft toy eyes, or round black beads
• Toy stuffing
• Wadding

Tools:

• Scissors
• Sewing machine
• Hot glue gun & glue sticks
• Pliers
• Wire snips

Using a couple of pieces of paper, make a template for the upper and lower wings, the upper wing should be slightly bigger.

The body template only needs to be rough to make sure it's in proportion to how you want your moth to look.

You'll need to make 2 of each wing, and you'll need to cut out 2 pieces of fabric for each wing.

I did this by folding the fabric in half and pinning them together before cutting them out each time,

Remember to leave a seam allowance when cutting around the template, about 1/2 inch is fine.

Next, cut out a piece of wadding for each wing, no need for a seam allowance on these.

If you want any additional decorative fabric sewn onto the wings at the main seam, now is the time to add this too, I'm adding a strip of black organza on the lower wing in this way.

Finally pin the layers together making sure that the right side of the fabric is facing in.

You can lay them down as:

1. Wing fabric, right side up
2. Wing fabric, wrong side up
3. Wadding

Sew around the very edge of the wadding, it should compress right down.

Make sure to leave the narrow part of the wing unsewn (the part that will attach to the body), this is where you will turn it out from. The hole needs to be about 1 1/2 -2 inches across .

Turn out each wing by pushing it the right way out through the opening at the narrow part of the wing. You might need to use something long, sturdy and blunt to help with this (the wrong end of a wide gauge needle or crochet hook can work, or the wrong end of a pen, be careful not to accidentally draw on your wings!

Once all the wings are turned out you can put them together to check you're happy with how they look.

Now it's time to make those wings look more...wingy!

I'ts really up to you how you do this but I cut out some decorative fabric to use for applique on the top wings, and I ran both wings through the sewing machine to add detail, texture and to stiffen them up a bit.

Once you've finished, it's time for the tedious job of sewing in all the loose ends of thread. it's not an enjoyable job, but once you're done you can lay your wings out and admire them!

First, take a good look at your fur fabric, the fur is usually laying in one direction and you want to make sure that you work with it being the right direction. Imagine you're stroking a cat or dog from their head to to their tail, that's how you want the fur to lay from head to tail on your moth.

Next, using the body template loosely cut out a piece of the fur slightly large (so you can cut it down if needed) remember the fur will be folded in half, sewn and stuffed so keep folding it, and checking it's a size you're happy with.

When cutting the fur fabric, try to part the fur to avoid trimming too much from the actually fur, cutting the base mesh fabric instead.

Also, when sewing fur, particularly long fur, the pile can get caught in the seam and make the seam look very obvious and although you can pull the fur out of the seam, this takes time and can loosen your seams.

To combat this, I like to use some tape (any tape really but nothing too tacky). Firstly brush the fur with you hands away from the edges to be sewn and towards the centre of your piece, then lightly add tape to keep it there. You can see from the photo that when the fur is folded and pinned there is almost no fur escaping from the sides.

Now sew the body up, starting at the head end and working towards the tail, leaving a gap to turn the fabric out and stuff.

After turning out the fabric you can place it next to the wings and check you're happy with the shape and size.

Next thing to do is stuff the body using toy stuffing, once this has been done and the body is as well stuffed as you'd like, then sew up the opening, taking care not to get too tangled up with the fur!

For the legs and antennae, I have used a softish craft wire, but something like pipe cleaners could also work.

Cut three long lengths for the legs. Then, and this is fiddly, you need to part the fur on the part of the body where you want the leg to go and push it through the fabric. Fur fabric usually had a reasonably open mesh structure to it, but it still often needs some encouragement so don't give up. Then you need to feed it through the body and out the other side where the corresponding leg should be positioned.

The three pieces should give you the six legs needed, take a look at them as you may decided to to trim them down a bit if they are too long.

Now cut two smaller pieces of wire for the antennae, using pliers you can curl one end of each of them up. Then insert them into the head as you did the legs (without needing to feed them through to the otherside).

To secure all the wire I have used hot glue, for the legs I applied a small blob just where the wire and fabric meet on both sides for the 3 pieces of wire. For the antennae I applied glue to the end of the wire to be inserted into the moths head and then pushed it into the fabric before the glue cools and hardens. Be careful of your fingers if you do this though.

For the eyes, I used toy eyes. As the moth was sewn up, I couldn't add the rear clasp so instead I added some hot glue to the stem and pushed it into the moth. You could use a black bead and sew it into place instead.

Now, this part is optional and completely up to you for how you want your moth to look. If you look at fluffy moths you can see they often have longer fur on their heads, to achieve this look you can give your moth a haircut! Simply trim away longer fur until you get the look you want, doing this with the legs and antennae attached can help guide how far up you want to trim, just trim around them. Remember to keep turning you moth to check you are trimming evenly.

To attach the wings, I used wire to help out again. Cut two short lengths of wire, applied glue to the ends and inserted them into the wing where it'll attach to the body. Once cooled (and secure) add glue to the other ends and insert them into the body of the moth.

Once in position, and secured with the wire, I parted the fur and added a line of hot glue to secure the edge of the wing to the body of the moth.

Repeat this for all 4 wings.

Now your moth is finished!

You can add findings (such as a hook) depending on how you want to display it, I chose to have it up on the wall.