Wednesday, January 16, 2013

F-suit Pillow

The f-suit that I made for the Vanilla Gallery show was designed to be shown suspended from the ceiling, so I needed to make something to go inside of the suit so it would look good while on display. 

The gallery asked how they could show it, and at first I thought I could just send them the suit and let them stuff it with packing peanuts or newspapers or something... But I figured it might not look very good - it could end up being misshaped or lumpy. 

Next my idea was to make a simplified pattern for a stuffed "pillow" form, but I was running out of time to develop a whole new pattern... 

So, I ended up just making the same pattern as the leather version but in cloth, and stuffing it with polyester fiberfill. A large part of the time in making the suit in leather is managing and gluing down all the seam allowances - something I wouldn't need to worry about with the cloth version. 

I wanted to use enough fill to give the body a good shape, but not so much that shipping it to Japan would cost a fortune. My hope was to use a vacuum-seal storage bag to reduce the "pillow" to manageable size for mailing. 

The good thing is the pillow came out pretty cool. It had a good shape, and filled the f-suit nicely. Once I had it stuffed, I could use it to figure out the proper dimensions for the hanging frame...









6 comments:

  1. I knew it'll make a good pillow! Albeit being bizarre-looking, it's 100% huggable!

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  2. It actually was pretty cute on it's own...

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  3. I'm obsessed with your work! Nothing else compares! Much praise Christopher, keep em comin :)

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    1. Thanks, -thirteen-, I'm glad I'm not the only one (who's obsessed!)... More in the works!

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  4. Hello Chris,

    please, tell me, do you have anything ( like patterns ), what would help us to create this f-suit? We have already upper part done ( butterfly jacket ), but bottom part looks harder to figure out.

    You are very experienced man, we love your works! I can share images of our manufacturing :)

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    1. Hi Zlad,
      I don't have that pattern digitized, and have no plans to do so any time soon. I don't share pattens until I consider them bulletproof, and in the case of the f-suit there were modifications made along the way. I'd suggest you make your own pattern using a wrap, and glean what clues you can from the progress shots I've posted. Good luck!

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