Moth Your Own Man

Mothman is my favourite cryptid, and I really wanted to make a soft toy version. So I did. And now you can, too!

This one is a lot more involved than the Small Soft Toys from Printable Pattern I've posted before, but I believe in you, Mothman believes in you... You can do it!

Anyway, in terms of skillset, they're not really functionally different except for the part where you attach the wings, which I 100% made up on the fly (hehehe, get it? get it?? ...I'll fetch me coat) so I'm sure you can do it too! I did, because of the wings, have to close up a bit differently, but we'll figure it out together.

Ingredients:

• Fleece or other fabric (I recommend fleece because it doesn't fray, it's snuggly, and it's easy to find in charity shops if you want to reuse/recycle and cut up some coats or jumpers) in 7 colours (I have indicated in the filenames and in the printable pdf which pieces correspond with which colours on my pictured Mothman, but you're under no obligation to follow that colour scheme - do share if you make one, especially if you use funky colours!).
• Polyfil or other stuffing (you can use scraps of fabric for this).
• Needles and thread (if you're using fleece, I recommend a very thin needle; thicker ones are a pain to get through the fabric, especially where you're joining multiple pieces).
• A printer and paper (if you're using the printable PDF).
• Scissors.
• Pins or clips to pin or clip pieces together (while I personally prefer clips, they don't work where you're attaching decorative elements like the lamps).
• A pencil, for turning and stuffing.

If you're making this toy using fabrics other than fleece, you will have to leave more space between your seam and the edge of the fabric, because fleece is heat set which means it won't fray. That means either accept your finished Mothman will be smaller, or cut your pieces bigger to leave more room for a bigger seam allowance.

I've provided SVG files for lasercutting, named for the colours I used in my sample Mothman, and also a printable PDF.

To lasercut fleece, I use a higher speed and a low power. Experiment a bit with various settings if you haven't used fleece before (even if you have used other fabrics before). Lasercut fleece smells awful for a day or two after being lasercut; you can put all the pieces in a lingerie bag and run them through the wash, or you can just wait. The smell will dissipate.

There is a non-zero chance I made these names up, but I'm cadging these images off my other soft toy sewing tutorial and I think they're pretty clear.

In these images, of which the overcast stitch is the first, I've used a flat line to indicate the "wrong" side of the fabric (which, in polar fleece, would be the side that is more or less flat) and a bobbly line to indicate the "right" side of the fabric (which, in polar fleece, would be the cuddlier side).

To use the overcast stitch, which is for example how I attached the lamps to the wings, the eyes to the face, and the belly panels to the front of the body, you simply attach only the outside of the top piece, to the bottom piece. So you bring your needle up near the edge of the lamp (for example) and then bring it back down again over the edge, without catching the lamp at all.

This is how you attach the decorations to the wings, the belly parts to the front, and the eyes to each other and then to the face.

There is a possibility for saving time and faff, if you want or if you prefer the look - I made the eyes out of 3 colours to add some shine, but obviously you don't have to. You don't have to add a shine at all, or if you want to, you can just add the white bits or just the orange bits. I will say, start with the smallest piece! If you sew the base eyes to the face first, and then add shine, you're progressively working with more layers of fabric, which can really make your life more difficult (especially when using a thick fabric such as fleece).

Whenever I make a soft toy, I do all the overcast stitching first and then move on to the next step. You are of course very free to do what you like, but for individual parts do the overcast first - sewing on the eyes when the head is already assembled is going to be awful, for example.

The mouth is a bit complex, although it uses only the overcast stitch, so I thought I'd dedicate an extra step to it. Basically, you're going to use the overcast stitch to sew the blue mouthpiece onto the top lip, and then again to sew it onto the bottom lip.

I've provided photos of the finished front as well as the back, so you can see what I mean.

The running stitch is going to be your most-used stitch because it's the one you'll use to do almost all of the assembly. To use it, simply place the components right side together and move the needle up and down near the edge.

I moved in the following order, which caused no hangups:

• Sew the pink bobbles to the ends of the antennae, then sew the two halves of each antenna together, then turn inside out using a pencil to push the bobble through. Stuff the antennae at this point.
• Sew the fronts of the wings to the backs of the wings.
• Sew the front of the body to the back of the body, then turn inside out (use a pencil for his many legs) and sew the wings to the back piece by working inside the body (this is a very fiddly bit, unfortunately. It helps to sew the wings to each other first and then sew the whole lot together, which means going through a LOT of layers. Make sure the wings are inserted in the back slit in such a way that the line of stitching attaching the wings is inside the body or in the seam where you attach the lot).
• Sew the front of the head to the back of the head (experiment with where to place the antennae, and sandwich them in between the front and back when you pin.
• Sew the head and body together halfway, while both are outside-out.
• Move to the next step.

Carefully insert stuffing into your Mothman's head and body. Again, a pencil can be very handy for getting stuffing into his many legs. The wings are already closed off; that's fine because they're wings and don't need stuffing (for obvious aerodynamic reasons). The antennae were stuffed during an earlier step. Once the body and head are stuffed, be aware you may want to stuff a tiny bit more right before you close off the piece entirely. Basically stuff as tightly as you'd like, but also bear in mind you can't really stuff the space where you haven't closed a seam yet, until you're very close to closing it up entirely, at which point you can jam more stuffing in using the pencil.

Almost there now... We just have to close up this pesky last bit.

Basically, to close up, we're going to make a little stitch comparable to the lace closure of a corset. That will allow us to conceal the stitch, and close up the seam as if it were just part of the regular sewing you did to put Mothman together.

Start by inserting your needle into the seam of your turning/stuffing gap. To do so, put it inside the toy, and sew as you would if it were still the wrong way out. Now follow the line your seam would have taken had you closed up the entire toy, and sew small stitches on one side, then the other, allowing you to pull the entire thing together at the end. You'll be leaving most of the stitching underneath the seam, concealed by the fabric. Remember to pause when you have 1 or 2 centimetres to go, to tuck in any further stuffing you'd like to add before you finish closing the gap.

Tie off carefully, and try to tuck the knot into the seam at the end to make it invisible.

Congratulations, for today, you have Mothed a Man.