New Centurions Plushie- Hydris Thriss Secret Project

My long time friend (the one that's letting me and hubby live in her house) got deployed to Iraq in February (one of the reasons we're living in her house, actually...). Well, June 6 was her birthday and her husband had me make her a plushie that we sent over to her. It arrived today so I can FINALLY upload pictures of it!

This is the first full plushie that I've done of my larger size pattern. Instead of 12 inches tall, Hydris here is 15 inches tall (I think that was not counting the large bun of hair, too).

Little story about this plushie, at least as far as the character goes. My husband runs this really fun RPG with me, the girl I made this plushie for, and two of our other friends that's based off an old 80's cartoon called The Centurions. The game is filled with awesome 80's campiness even though it's supposed to be 10 years after the show ended, which is one of the things that make it really fun. Actually, we get extra props based on just how good of "random 80's cartoons solutions to problems" we can come up with. :) Anyway, we all play the new Centurions specialists, and we've added new characters in rather than just the Air, Land, and Sea ones from the original cartoon (we don't have Energy or Infiltration, but we do have Paranormal and Fire/Demolitions).

So, I play the new Centurion Air, my friend Karen plays Centurion Sea (this character is the one I made the plushie of), Nichole plays Centurion Land, and Sara plays Centurion Fire/Demolitions (who I have a drawing of but... apparently never uploaded it to DevArt? Oops). Paranormal Ops is an NPC. We get in to all sorts of trouble in the game and I really miss it because it's so damn fun. Can't wait to get to play again, especially since my character was thinking about breaking up with Paranormal Ops... But anyway, I got off on a tangent there.

Hydris is the leader of the group, and usually keeps us in line with baked treats- especially chocolate chip cookies! Seen as the level-headed one, she has to keep Ariel (me) and Garnet (Nichole) from throttling each other on a daily basis as well as make the tough calls for the team. Rather than make Hydris in her civies, I decided to go ahead and make her in her Exoframe, which provided some interesting challenges...

First, I had to FIND green wool felt in that color, thankfully it wasn't that hard and the color was really perfect for her exoframe. The black is regular ecofelt stuff, as is her hair. Her face was made with chocolate brown buttersuede, so she's really a hodge-podge of materials. Face was, of course, hand-painted on with acrylic paints. I actually painted her face before I had the head sewn together instead of after, like usual, and I think I'm going to do that from now on.

This was the fastest plushie body I have ever put together, by the way. I had to order the fabric and then I made the head while I was waiting for it to arrive. Her head then hung around and looked creepy in my studio for a day or two while I waited for the green. As soon as it got here I got to work, cut the body out and whipped it together real fast, stuffed it, then started layering on the black felt. Once I had that done I cut out the additional green felt pieces for the top layer and started punching holes in them with a grommet hole punch and built those up to get a sort of 3D effect. I really like it, actually. Not bad for my first try at an Exoframe, actually. It would be really cool to make each of the characters from the game when I have more money for fabric!

Oh, I really like what I did with her bun of hair. I thought it was a little stroke of genius, actually. Cut a big circle of felt, gathered it with hand stitching and put some stuffing inside, then I used my 7 inch long dollmaker's needs to put "sections" in the hair and pull the middle in so that it would look more irregular and like... well... hair! Then I used the extra thread to sew it to the head just like I attach heads to bodies, and finally glued the "hair tie" around to hide any messy stitching.

Oh... and as a little extra I HAD to make her a plush cookie! It's made from camel colored ecofelt and dark brown acrylic, with a loop of elastic attached so she can hold it. :) The cookie was my idea to add to the plushie, since the plushie itself was her hubby's idea and I can't take credit for anything but executing it... Well, and I did the character design, but still. ;)


Let me know what you think of the plushie in the comments, or leave a birthday message for my friend if you'd like. She works really hard over there and we miss her!