Bigger is always better- while my
Little Felt Mario was cuteish, my Mario Plushie is entirely awesome sauce! And probably life sized, he is rather short...
I found a plethora of images of the aforementioned plumber on the interwebs (although word to the wise there are some weird images of Princess Peach) to use as a base. I then drew my own version- Mario's head is pretty much the same size as his body without feet so I divided the paper almost in half. A third of the top half was his hat, the other two thirds were his face, his arms came half way down his body. So I just divided the paper up by folding it to offer me a grid to draw on. I only needed to draw the left half as I folded the fabric over to make sure both sides were symmetrical. I had to modify the drawing a little for the back- no face but hair instead, and slightly different straps for his overalls.
Once I had my Mario drawing, I placed another sheet over the top and traced the drawing so that I could cut out each element- his hands, feet, arms, overalls, face, ears, moustache, side burns, hair, eyes, eyebrow, nose, hat. I then set about cutting these out of fabric- luckily I had plenty of the correct colours left over from when I made the
Mario and Luigi Pillow Cases for Valentines Day for Boyfriend. I kept it all fairly simple apart from using some pretty flowery blue fabric for his overalls, as well as some weird mottled fabric from an old pillowcase that was the closest thing to Mario skin colour (with perhaps a skin disease).
I sewed the individual pieces together to make the front, I sewed the elements onto his face at this point too, then made up the back. I decided that I needed a lining as my stitching had left tiny gaps that might fail when the plushie was stuffed. I traced around the outline of his entirety and cut it out of some spare red fabric. Some how both lining pieces (front and back) came out different sizes and shapes despite the fact I cut them out at the same time, also they were different from the Mario front and back I had made which also didn't match each other- d'oh! But some pulling and prodding and they all fell in line.
I pinned the front lining to front fabric, and the back to the back, then the front pieces to the back pieces wrong sides together. I mulled over sewing them right sides together but this would have added the complicated of turning him right side out again at the end. Also my stitching so far had been visible so I kept the edge stitching also visible.
As I was sewing him up I started adding stuffing, much easier to do this as you go than at the end when you have fiddly bits like arms and legs to fill. When I got to the top I added an extra piece of red fabric to finish the top of his hat (I probably should have/could have just made one of the original hat pieces bigger for this but I didn't think it through at the time! Then I finished stuffing and sewed up his head. I then added another this curve of red fabric for the peak of his cap. And then I was done :)
