"It seems Keaton, the ghost fox, plays tricks in the grass..."
LOZ: Majora's Mask is my favourite game in the Zelda series, I remember when I found Keaton I was in awe. I thought it was the prettiest character I had ever seen and I just liked to be around it.
After all these years I finally decided to make one out of felt, follow my instructions to make one for yourself.
What you will need:
*Yellow and white Felt.
*Yellow thread
*Black DMC cotton (thick thread)
*Small needle and big needle.
*Berry Pins
*Scissors
*Black and white acrylic paint.
*Big and small Paint brush.
*Polyfill (i.e. stuffing. Don’t have any? Use something else soft like cotton balls!, Not shown.)
*A4 Paper (for pattern, not shown)
What are Berry pins?
Berry Pins are pins with a ball at the top, they are used to pin patterns to fabric as the ball stops the pin from pushing all the way through and falling out.
Why do I need a big and small needle?
The DMC it quite thick and won’t go through a small pin head but the big needle is too large to do ordinary sewing with. You need both.
Here is my Keaton pattern, print this out onto paper; you can make it bigger or smaller if you like.
Step 1
Print pattern then roughly cut out pattern pieces.
Fold yellow felt in half, this will save time by letting you cut out two pieces at once. Using berry pins, attach the body, head and neck to yellow felt, cut around the pattern.
When cutting out the tails, fold the yellow felt in half and place the part of the pattern that says ‘fold’ against the fold line. Cut out 3 tails.
Step 2
Take the body pattern and cut along the dotted lines to separate it from the ‘lower body’ piece. Fold the white felt in half and just like when cutting out the tails place the lower body pattern piece against the fold of the felt. Use berry pins to keep in place and cut pattern out.
Step 3
After cutting out all the pattern pieces it’s time to sew them together.
Note: You must sew by hand as the pattern has too many small curves and tricky bits that a sewing machine can’t really handle.
Don’t know how to hand sew?
Check out this website showing you basic stiches and how to tie knots!
cyberseams.com/...
Thread your small needle, tie a knot at the end so that both strands of the thread are knotted, this will make the thread stronger and less likely to break when sewing.
Start by sewing the lower body and body together.
Step 4
Continue sewing all pattern pieces together. The actual paper pattern will help you understand where each piece connects. Just use the letters as a guide. A connects to A, B connects to B and so on. Leave an opening at the tail end so you can turn inside out and stuff.
Step 5
After you’re done sewing you need to turn Keaton inside out so all of your sewing is hidden and it has a nice smooth finish.
Use your thumb to start turning it inside out, then use something long with a blunt end (I’m using a knitting needle) to get into the little areas like ears and legs. Also use the needle to push stuffing into these small areas too.
Step 6
Stuff Keatons head with pollyfill or other soft filling. Only stuff the head for now.
Thread the Black DMC cotton through the big needle and tie a knot at the end.
We need to be able to reach the face with the needle; this is why we are not stuffing the whole thing yet.
Push the needle through the back opening towards the head and pull the needle through the face where you want the eyes to be.
I wanted my eyes to curve so I put a little knot in the middle of them so they didn’t just go straight when I pulled the DMC tight. I also sewed another layer of DMC at the bottom half to help disguise the knot and give it more of an eye.
Step 7
Push needle down and out of snout and sew around it to make a nose.
Tie knot and hide it in the body.
Continue to stuff the rest of the body until it’s quite tight, still leaving back open so you can sew in the tails later.
Step 8
Water down some white acrylic paint and use your brush to paint half of both ears. Wait for it to dry and then paint tips of ears black.
Step 9
Fold tails in half, sew them up (leaving bottom open) and turn them inside out.
Once again water down some white acrylic paint and dab it around the top of the tails.
Let the paint dry and then paint black acrylic at the tips of the tails, make it streaky so it looks more like ‘fur’.
Let paint dry then stuff and sew up the bottoms.
Step 10
Sew tails together and then sew them into the opening at the back.
In order to make Keaton sit you need to squeeze him together into a sitting position and then sew around the bottom so he stays like that.
To finish him up you need to sew tails closer to body with a few stitches and then sew front legs together
You’re done!
