So here we have the before and after pic from my last post, in which I talked about deblobbinating the paw by repatterning it using "Frankensteining", a method using felt patches and temporary adhesive spray. Here I'll talk about deblobbinating by using inside supports.

As this paw is so much bigger than the wearer's hand, it was clear from the get go it would need some kind of internal support, as otherwise it would look like a weird bag hanging from the end of the wearer's arm. I had some faint hopes that I could just stuff it with fiberfill and use the lining to hold the fiberfill in place, but nope, too blobby. See above left. 

The next solution to present itself was stuffing the original foam hand (from which I made the pattern) inside the fabric one. Remember this guy? 

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 Nice thought but nope, doesn't fit. The wrist is narrower than most other parts of the hand, and squish as I might the foam fingers don't really fit through the fabric sleeve at the wrist. Plus, there's a lot of bitty details to line up and glue down, like tendons and knuckles, and I don't know how I'd see to maneuver a glue gun between the foam and fabric once one is stuffed in the other. There is also the very significant consideration that I would really not want to recreate the entire foam hand every time I made one of these. 

So.. next approach, two considerations... First, can I use only parts of the foam hand? What is the minimum amount of foam I can get away with to get the look I want? Second, since I can't stuff a finished foam hand into a finished fabric one, to what degree can I add foam as I sew up the hand and build the support as I go?

My first take on the  bare minimum. A foam "tube" to support the palm and back of the paw, and foam detail to add definition to the knuckles, tendons, and first joints.  

​ I removed the sleeve from the fabric paw so I could maneuver the foam inside, and held it all lightly together with temporary adhesive to get an idea of how it would work. (The palmar pad is missing, I know.. I hadn't added it onto this particular draft as I I was already pretty confident it worked. Pardon the little foam bitties.)

 And, ouch. The toes could easily bend uncomfortably backwards at the spot where the foam support in the first joint ended. I did not like this at all.

Here I've added foam that goes all the way to the tips of the fingers. 

More  views of the support piece with its additions. (The black thing is a patch of sorts, as I ripped a hole in that piece of foam in my zeal.)

Now that the support piece is that much more complicated, I need to be able to better see what I am doing while installing it.  I turned the fabric paw inside out, sprayed the support piece with temporary adhesive and laid the tops of the two parts against each other, tugging and fiddling to get everything lined up and in the right place.  The tube thing for the palm will flip into the correct position when the hand is turned right side out, though with some difficulty. That stupid piece of black foam that I used as a patch did not help. I've also added foam to support the toebeans here, as I'm curious to see how that will look. 

When I flipped the whole thing right side out again, I was much happier with how the fingers looked while moving, from above anyway. When viewed from the underside, the palm and fingers bunched and folded in some pretty odd ways. Time for more supports? I decided to try  adding some foam to the undersides of the fingers, in the process connecting the palm piece with the toebean pieces.  Also, putting the parts together as above allows me to line up and glue the top carefully before turning it right side out, but not the bottom. (I imagine I could do it the other way too, lining up the bottom but not the top, though the top being the more complicated piece it makes sense to do it that way.) How could I line both the top and the bottom parts up carefully before turning everything right side out? If I left one end of the foam tube open, I could lay the tops of fabric and foam together, line them up and glue them down, roll the fabric and foam over like a giant burrito, repeat with the bottom pieces, glue the ends of the foam tube together, then turn right side out. Viola!!

I also found that when the bottom of the finger was supported, the top didn't bend back as easily as it had before, so I could get away without foam all the way to the fingertips, just stuffing instead. 

The support that's actually in the finished draft. Look familiar? That's because it was one of the paws I made a tape pattern from, partially disassembled. 

Finally, I sewed the sleeve back on, using a ladder stitch as I had to sew on the "good" side (such as it is with felt) as opposed to the underside, as it was now very difficult to turn the paw inside out again. The spray adhesive complicated matters, as it wanted to collect on and knot up my thread and needle. I'm not sure if I'll be using the temporary adhesive for paws I plan on selling, so this may or may not be an issue.

Next, to make a pair of finished paws using this pattern, and actually offering them for sale! Stay tuned!

PS Fun fact!!  Trying to describe hand parts in this post made me go on a somewhat useless Internet search for the terms. I did find the term "Flagina", which supposedly is a name for the fold of skin between your thumb and forefinger. Hee hee!

Can I be honest here? This brown sleeve drives me nuts. It soooo triggers my OCD. I wanted it to be the same color as the rest of the hand!! I had used up all my tan felt so I used  this brown, the least offensive color I had in a large enough quantity in my stash. Normally I'd address this issue by running out to Joann Fabrics and buying some more tan felt, but... 

On July 10 much of Vermont was hit with catastrophic flooding and the local Joann Fabrics, along with all of the other stores in that particular shopping plaza, were wiped out. Four feet of water in the store. Sob!! As of this writing just about two months later, Joann's is still closed.  

Here is a video of the commercial area next to my hometown. Joann Fabric can be seen towards the very end, at 1:21 minutes.  We ourselves at Sans Souci Studios are grateful we only suffered a damp basement, but our hearts ache for all the people who lost homes and businesses. 

Ah, such high hopes. Previously I'd posted about my glorious latest paw draft, shown above taped up and ready for patterning. And also above, the paw I sewed up from that pattern. You can see the one does not look anywhere near as good the other. The sewn up paw looks short, chunky and blobby.

Well, at least the underside looks pretty good, though I think the wrist could use either some padding or other support.

I came to the conclusion there were two issues here, one with the fiberfill used for support and another with the duct tape used for patterning.  The duct tape often sticks to itself before it sticks to the model, so It's hard to get a pattern with any kind of fine detail. I had problems with the tape sticking to itself especially around the knuckles and tendons and in between the fingers.  This post will be about the solution to this problem with the tape.  Look for more about the issue with the fiberfill in my next post. 

​​I combined this newfound willingness to work directly from a paw with the rediscovery of an overlooked supply in my studio- temporary fabric adhesive- and invented a new patterning method, which I dubbed... Frankensteining! Scary!!!

Starting the edits to the paw for realz. Here, I've cut the top of the paw along the line between the knuckles and the first joint of the fingers. Easy to see how the knuckles grew larger and shifted forward from the original foam paw to the fabric paw. (The original knuckles are outlined in green, the shifted fabric knuckles outlined in white.)  It also appears that the knuckle and first joint of the pinky finger (here marked with a 4) merged completely. 

Reining in the oversized knuckles. I've pinched up the excess fabric with sewing clips, cut it off, and stitched it back together again with a blanket stitch, highlighted here in pink. 

(What are all the random thick black marks on the paw on the right hand side, you may ask? These are where I'm anticipating cutting the revised paw apart to make the new pattern.)

Tightening up the toes. Again, I pinched up the extra fabric, trimmed it off, and sewed the new edges together.  I've highlighted those seams in pink. I like how this process made the finger joints more clearly defined.

​Now it's time for the temporary fabric adhesive! I sprayed some adhesive onto scraps of felt to make patches of sorts. I laid these patches over any gaps in the fabric on the paws, tucking the edges of the patches under the preexisting fabric. Then I traced along the edges of the fabric onto the patches with a Sharpie, cut off the excess, and stitched the patch onto the paw using a blanket stitch.  

Above, showing the before and after of this process. There are gaps in the fabric  between the knuckles and the first joint on the first, third, and fourth fingers. These gaps are outlined in pink in the picture on the left, and the finished patches outlined in the same manner on the right. 

This next change was a critical one, though it's hard to see in photographs. The duck tape was too sticky to allow it to be positioned as far back between the fingers as it needed to be, which totally threw off the relative proportions of the fingers and the back of the hand in the resulting pattern. In other words, the back of the hand turned out too long and the fingers turned out too short and stumpy when I stitched them up!!  You can see how much further back into the back of the paw the fingers join now.  

Here's another visual to help illustrate the problem with the fingers attaching to each other in the incorrect spot. The photo on the left hand side shows the fingers joined correctly and in the proper proportions to the back of the hand. The photo on the left shows the fingers joined incorrectly and too short in proportions to the back of the hand.   

Imagine also, how the two different paws would move. The one on the left could wiggle its fingers more easily, and spread them more widely than the one on the right.

All edits made! Now, disassembling... cutting the Frankensteined paw into pieces in order to make the new, refined pattern.

The various pieces need to be cut in a way that they'll lie flat in order to make a proper pattern.  Here I've made the knuckles lie flat by cutting them into some pretty groovy shapes. Then I've traced this piece onto paper. I am planning to scan the traced patterns for all the handpaw pieces into the computer, make them pretty with GIMP, and make the whole thing available as a download.  

You can see the palmar pad and dew claw still attached to this piece. I am happy with the patterns I have for these parts already, and since whether or not they're there doesn't effect whether or not this piece lies flat, I've left them there.

And here we have the official Before And After! The original blobby paw on the left, and the edited, refined paw on the right. I'm very happy with this progress.