Feet of Foam

 As you recall from our last thrilling and chilling adventure! (Trixie can't stand the suspense.) I made a pattern from a clay paw I sculpted, enlarged the pattern with the aid of a projector and sewed together a draft of a handpaw, using the method furry how-to goddess Matrices describes in this tutorial. I promptly discovered that little irregularities become very big and nasty irregularities when they're enlarged like this and wound up with a rather lumpy and misshapen handpaw.  In this episode, how to fix?

One thing I did was play with the pattern on a lightbox, tracing and retracing the pieces to make them more even and symmetrical, and test the revised pattern out by building a foam handpaw. The advantages being that (other than that I could go down a rabbit hole trying something I hadn't done before) if parts didn't work I could rip them off and try different parts, I could be sure all the revised parts would fit together, and I could also retape the foam handpaw for new patterns if necessary.

Left, one of my earlier attempts at a foam foot. You can see the toes are all different lengths, which was actually intentional. Real dog toes are like this. The two outside toes, the ones corresponding to our pointers and pinkies (the pointer being the one next to the thumb/dewclaw), are usually depicted as being the same length, but the "pointer" is actually a little bit longer. Ditto the two inside toes, with "middle" toe being the longer of the pair.   There's not a big difference though, and for the sake of simplicity I decided I'd make the two inner and two outer toes the same length. Right, the foam pattern with the revised toes.

In addition to playing with the pattern on the lightbox, I also did some revising by building some new parts directly on the foam handpaw. Above, the underside of the paw, with foam "toebeans" added, from which to make fresh, even, symmetrical toebean patterns. Carving the toebeans out of foam and pinning them into the ends of the toes was simpler than trying to revise the enlarger toebean patterns with all their accompanying darts. 

Next, taping the toebeans to make the revised toebean patterns. I only taped one inner toebean and one outer toebean, and then flipped the resulting patterns for the other two toebeans. Kitty provides close supervision.

Similarly, I revised the palmar pad by building it directly on the foam handpaw. Above, sketching out the shape of  this pad on top of the pattern for the palm.

​And, the carved foam plantar pad, pinned into place to check its appearance before taping.​ (The toebeans vary in number in all these pictures because since they were only pinned on, they kept falling off!)

Taping up the palmar pad. I wound up cutting the tape pattern apart and re-taping it together a couple times to  to get a pattern with seams I like.

Some finished patterns. Toebeans, left, and plantar pad, right. 

Above, a draft sewn out of felt for this new revised pattern, in contrasting colors to make it easier to see how the beans and palmar pad work. I'm still not 100% sure I'm satisfied with the palmar pad and will probably re-tape the pattern and cut it apart again to get different seam lines.

 Another  view of this draft. The tops of the middle two fingers did not align with the back of the hand properly and left gaps (shown above as green lines.) I hadn't been careful enough to make hashmarks to show how the pattern pieces would line up together after they were cut apart. A total noob mistake.

Back to the drawing board. I retaped and repatterned the foam foot, this time being more careful with the hash marks. (You'll notice that the foam foot is getting more and more yellow. Fun fact! That's not the lighting, the foam will change color like this if it's exposed to light.)  

Above, the foot with the gaps on the left, and the foot made from the corrected pattern on the right. Getting there. The foot seems to be getting bigger and bigger with each iteration, probably from adding a pencil line's width every time I retrace a pattern. Next issue to address, shrinking down the pattern a little, which will hopefully just involve scanning it into the computer and reducing it a little in GIMP. After that, adding dew claws, carpal pads, and claws. Fingers crossed!!