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[malytwotails.livejournal.com]

Plush betta tutorial, because someone requested it:

Things you need:
a few pages of scrap paper, to make a mock pattern with
scraps of fleece in the colors you want for your fish
some stuffing (about a handful, usually gutting an old plush works fine for this)
two black buttons for the eyes
embroidery floss in three colors - one for the body stitching, one for the mouth, and black for the gills.
a needle sharp enough to sew through fleece, but with an eye big enough for embroidery floss (a needlepoint needle works great!)
a few pins, to hold stuff in place while you stitch

Estimated project time: about 2 hours

First thing to do is to grab the paper, and using my crude drawing as a reference, draw yourself a pattern for each of the pieces. The colored "stitches" show you where on the fish the fins will go, and the red numbers on the pieces tell you how many of those shapes you'll have to cut out of the fleece. Forgive my lacking knowledge of actual betta fin/part names, I'm an artist, not a ...knower...person. c_c Note that the tail on this one is a veil-shaped tail, if you have a halfmoon or a fullmoon betta, you can alter the pattern to fit your fish. For size, I made the body of my fish about 7 inches long, although I guess this pattern could be adapted to any size you want.


Cut out each of your pieces in paper, and then cut out the correct number of fins in actual fleece, using your patterns as guides. Once you've gotten them all cut and ready to go, you can start piecing together your fish.

Ideally, start sewing at the point where the lower fin meets the tail, moving forward towards the head of the fish. That way, your knot will be hidden. Make sure to leave 3" or so of extra embroidery thread on the knot, since you'll need it later. I made this fish more folk-y than realistic, I chose to go with stitches on the outside of my plush, and to make it even more obvious, I wanted to use a really contrasting color in the embroidery thread. Since I was sick when I did this, apparently my medication overrode my judgement, and the lavender I chose in my plushie was too close to the body color. If I could do it again, I'd give him white stitches.


Sandwich your fins together between the body pieces, and only have one loose fin in the body at a time. It makes it a lot less clumsy to work with that way. Sew in 1cm whip stitches, making sure that you're always contacting the fin inside of the body as you go. Work all the way around the body using this technique, first sewing in the big bottom fin, and then the two dangly long fins, up around the mouth area (keep that pointy nose, it's part of the profile!), up to adding the top fin, and then stop before you add the tail.


Now is when you stuff your fish, so do that. Once it's all stuffed, you can sew the body closed at the same time you're adding the tail. The knot should meet up with that extra 3" you left, so use that to tie a second knot, and you're good to go.

The body is mostly done at this point, so you can sew on his little 'hand' fins now that it's easier to work with. If you want, you can add the button eyes and be done with it. I chose to embroider on a little angry frowny mouth and some black gill slits, but it's your fish, so do it if you want.

All that's left to do is grab your scissors and cut out all of the triangles and points of the fins, so make them as smooth or as raggedy as you'd like.

Oh, and don't forget to wiggle your new plush betta in front of your real betta, just to show him off. :)