This is Disco Spangles my plush poseable peacock spider.
And this blog is a description of his creation and my creative process.
It was one bored evening chatting with my husband staring at YouTube videos of things I like, you know cats, rats and erm peacock spiders mating dances, when the idea came. Wouldn't they make awesome fabric art like a wall hanging or.....dum dum dum......a stuffed toy! That was it... why not make a furry peacock spider toy? After all they're so cute and I've never seen one; It wasn't until after I made him I Googled peacock spider plush and discovered lots of others also had similar ideas...In the words of the late great Terry Pratchett, bugger it.
First came the picture research. I would like to thank Jürgen Otto A.K.A. peacock spider man for his awesome photos and videos giving me reference material and inspiration. Initially I made the decision to try and make it as accurate as I could. I had reference photos I could measure to work out scale and colour to create the perfect copy. However the more I thought about that as a plan it seemed to lack something. The more images I looked at I found it harder and harder to single one type out to make, there are so many different ones. Also finding fabric to exactly match would take a very long time and when it comes to projects I sort of get a bee in my bonnet, I need to do it NOW!
The thing that stood out in my research was that as a person who is not keen on spiders these little guys (and they are tiny tiny) are just, well, adorable balls of fluff. With their big forward facing eyes, large heads and little tiny feet (three checks on the list of things humans need to find things cute/baby like) the fact they disco for their ladies it made me want one. It was this cute factor I needed to make my underlying goal not necessarily the correct physiology of the arachnid. After all spiders are not the most popular things (the weird eight legged freaks as apposed to us weird two legged freaks) I wanted to make something I could show people without them freaking out and splatting it with a broom. This plan of action also opened up a whole wide variety of fabric choices as good quality fur fabric is not cheep nor easy to come by. As a kinaesthetic fabric purchaser I like to not just see but to touch and feel to learn how it moves and works I don't buy anything without touching, which meant I need samples from online retailers or to travel to local stores.
I found a lovely black and grey short pile fur in Truro fabrics and opted for felt to do the tail with a marabou trim. The short pile brown fur was a lucky find fur in the offcuts basket. I chose two sizes in flat round buttons for the eyes and for the smallest eyes I found small black spherical buttons. All of these were as close as I could find to the real thing or at least looked spidery.
With the fabric got I had to figure out a way of making it poseable. Teddy joints were a no no as I wanted to be able to move it like a spider and pull off those dance moves. I opted for an animation/sculpture solution to this problem a wire armature. Although this sacrificed the cuddly aspect it gave it the more fun and real aspect. To create the wire armature I used the only wire I could quickly obtain, garden wire. On the next one I will probably order 3-5mm aluminium wire from an animation supplier. To give the wire strength I twisted it together this also helped hold the legs in place. The body wire was approx. 8" long and each leg was about 12" I also made a 5" separate strip of wire for the pedipalps. To hold it all in place I wire wrapped them together please see photo
Then came the pattern making I draw out my prototype patterns on news paper as its flexible hard wearing and I can pin it together to get a good idea of how it will turn out from looking at the spider I noted the flat face and large head to body ratio I made a three piece pattern by drawing out a side free hand and then fitted a gusset for the head to that shape which tapered out see pic below. The head side is 16cm by 11cm dart is 4.5 cm deep and is the same from the front edge. The head gusset is 33cm by 11cm (taper starts at 9cm) for the tail I went with a four piece design to gain the shape I wanted. I made an oval tapered piece more curved on one side than the other to make a sort of flatter rugby ball shape 17cm by 7cm. All pieces included a 1cm seam allowance. for the legs I made tubes 29cm long by 7cm and the pedipalps I had originally drawn an oval shape but stuck with the simple tube 8cm by 6cm.
I found a lovely black and grey short pile fur in Truro fabrics and opted for felt to do the tail with a marabou trim. The short pile brown fur was a lucky find fur in the offcuts basket. I chose two sizes in flat round buttons for the eyes and for the smallest eyes I found small black spherical buttons. All of these were as close as I could find to the real thing or at least looked spidery.
With the fabric got I had to figure out a way of making it poseable. Teddy joints were a no no as I wanted to be able to move it like a spider and pull off those dance moves. I opted for an animation/sculpture solution to this problem a wire armature. Although this sacrificed the cuddly aspect it gave it the more fun and real aspect. To create the wire armature I used the only wire I could quickly obtain, garden wire. On the next one I will probably order 3-5mm aluminium wire from an animation supplier. To give the wire strength I twisted it together this also helped hold the legs in place. The body wire was approx. 8" long and each leg was about 12" I also made a 5" separate strip of wire for the pedipalps. To hold it all in place I wire wrapped them together please see photo
Then came the pattern making I draw out my prototype patterns on news paper as its flexible hard wearing and I can pin it together to get a good idea of how it will turn out from looking at the spider I noted the flat face and large head to body ratio I made a three piece pattern by drawing out a side free hand and then fitted a gusset for the head to that shape which tapered out see pic below. The head side is 16cm by 11cm dart is 4.5 cm deep and is the same from the front edge. The head gusset is 33cm by 11cm (taper starts at 9cm) for the tail I went with a four piece design to gain the shape I wanted. I made an oval tapered piece more curved on one side than the other to make a sort of flatter rugby ball shape 17cm by 7cm. All pieces included a 1cm seam allowance. for the legs I made tubes 29cm long by 7cm and the pedipalps I had originally drawn an oval shape but stuck with the simple tube 8cm by 6cm.
I then laid the pattern out paying attention to the pile and ensuring it ran the same way and cut it out. I made a stripy piece for the head then stitched the head together leaving two small gape to feed the wire strip though for the pedipalps which I put on and stuffed in place before hand stitching
HEAD
I then stitched together the abdomen which was deliberately smaller then the head (approx. half to one third the size of the head) then the legs. To fit the wire armature in the legs had to be place on stuffed then stitched in place before the head and finally the abdomen. all the stuffing had to be done whilst on the wire and then the pieces were all hand stitched.
After putting him together I then stitched on the eyes and sparkly marabou spinnerets before making the felt tail piece with trim.
I zigzagged on the applique pattern to the tail and stitched in the marabou edge and covered the back in dark brown felt before hand sewing it to the base of the head/top of the abdomen and to the bottom of the abdomen and ta da! Disco Spangles was born.
Over all I know I could have made a more accurate spider but as I wanted the over all cute fuzziness I feel I have achieved what I set out to do which was create a poseable peacock spider plush.
The whole process of making him and the pattern was an afternoons work so by far the fastest make from scratch I've done in a while.
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