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A Geometric Approach to Making Plushie Patterns

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Contents
Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................ 2
Measuring Length ................................................................................................................................................. 3
The Law of One Length ....................................................................................................................................... 4
Applying the Law of One Length: A Simple Cone ...................................................................................... 6
Problem-Solving with the Law of One Length ........................................................................................... 8
Pillow-Sewing: A Naïve Approach to Making Patterns ....................................................................... 10
Gussets ................................................................................................................................................................... 11
Designing a Gusset ............................................................................................................................................. 12
Darts ........................................................................................................................................................................ 15
When Mathematics and Reality Collide ..................................................................................................... 16
Conclusion............................................................................................................................................................. 18

Last updated 3/17/2014

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Introduction

Pattern-making is, in my opinion, the hardest part of making plushies. When

everything’s said and done, sewing plushies is really just a matter of following instructions;
the pattern is the nexus of the plush and can singlehandedly determine the fate of a plushie
to be made. It’s no wonder that people are always asking artists for patterns; the process of
making a pattern is difficult and unpredictable, making finished patterns all the more
valuable.
The fundamental problem of pattern-making is as follows: how can we take a series
of two-dimensional shapes and fold them together to create a three-dimensional object?
Alternatively, we can look at the problem in reverse: how can we take a three-dimensional
object and attempt to preserve its features in two dimensions?

The latter problem is one which has many applications beyond just making plushies.
It’s the fundamental problem of cartography: How does one attempt to take the three-
dimensional Earth and turn it into a 2D map? When doing so, there are two characteristics
that one would like to preserve. The first is that we would like the map to have a uniform
scale, which is to say that any two points which are, say, an inch apart should be the same
distance apart on the Earth, regardless of the absolute positions of these points. The second
is that we would like the map to be continuous; aside from the borders of the map, there
should be no gaps between any two points. If you’re an avid cartographer, you’ll know that
it’s impossible to satisfy both of these properties; the myriad of different maps out there is
a testament to the fact that if it was possible, somebody would have found out by now.
And such is the case with plush-making. Realistically speaking, it is more or less
impossible to construct “perfect” shapes like spheres, but we can do our best to
approximate what a sphere should look like, using the stretchy properties of fabric to help
us out. Though pattern-making requires meticulous attention to detail, it can be
surprisingly imprecise at times. My goal is to give you an idea of the types of
approximations you can use to develop your patterns.
 3

Measuring Length

Before I begin, I want to talk a little about the notion of length. You’re probably
thinking, “I don’t need to be told what length is! How stupid do you think I am?” But a
thorough understanding of length is vital to making good plushie patterns. Fortunately, it’s
not a hard concept to explain; the most you’ll need is an understanding of the Pythagorean
Theorem.
Yeah, you remember the Pythagorean Theorem, don’t
you? That says that if you want to find the length of the
hypotenuse of a triangle, in this case 𝑐, you follow the
relation 𝑐 2 = 𝑎2 + 𝑏 2 , or 𝑐 = √𝑎2 + 𝑏 2 .
So what does this have to do with measuring length? The
Pythagorean Theorem gives us a way to measure the length
of any line. Well, we’d like a way to be able to measure the
length of a curve, something more sophisticated than taking
a piece of string, laying it on top of the curve, and then
measuring the length of the string. In essence, what we’re
going to do is “approximate” a curve using straight lines; that way, our estimate of the
curve’s length is simply the sum of the lengths of each of the individual lines.
For instance, take a look at the black
curve to the right. We could approximate
its length simply by measuring a straight
line distance from the start to the end of
the curve, denoted by the green line.
Clearly this will not give us a very
accurate estimate of the black curve’s
length. We could try the two piece
approximation given by the red path; this
is slightly better, but still not very good. If
we try a four-piece estimate, indicated by
the blue path, you can see that the blue path is much closer to the black curve than the
other two approximations, which will give us a better approximation of its length. In
general, we could increase the number of lines we use in our approximation to as large of a
number as we want; however, at some point, adding more lines to our approximation
wouldn’t help the approximation significantly. In particular, as we continue to increase the
number of lines we use in our approximation, the sum of the lengths we get will begin to
converge to a fixed number; that fixed number is the length of the path.
In practice, we’ll never need to find the exact length of a path; usually an
approximation of 5-12 lines, depending on the shape of the curve, will suffice.
 4

The Law of One Length

I will begin my discussion of patterns by discussing the most important guiding

principle when making my patterns. I call it The Law of One Length (named after the
economic concept of the Law of One Price). It can be stated as follows:
 Two borders can be connected only if they have the same length.
 For sufficiently simple shapes, if two borders have the same length, they can be
connected.
While it may seem completely obvious and trivial, The Law of One Length has some
important implications when it comes to making patterns. Much of its power draws from
the second statement, that two borders which have the same length can (almost) always be
connected. Note that this statement says nothing about what the shape of each of the
borders is. Let’s take a look at some examples.
First, consider sewing two
identical pattern pieces, one of which
is mirrored, to each other. The Law of
One Length holds here because all of
the lengths match up; we may sew the
blue edge to the red edge because
both pieces are identical. In other
words, each of the sides being sewn
together has the same length, so the
entire path has the same length on
both pieces.
Now, consider the pattern pieces
to the right. Could we attach the red edge
to the blue edge? Note that it’s not a
problem that the red border is straight
and that the blue border is curved; when
you attempt to sew the edges together,
the fabric will bend naturally so that the
borders sew together nicely. Thus, it
might seem like you can sew the edges
together because the red edge and blue
edge seem to be the same height.
However, the blue curve is actually
longer than the red line! Remember that a line draws out the shortest path between two
points; because we have two paths that start and end at the same point, but the blue path is
a curve, that makes the blue edge longer than the red edge. This would cause problems if
 5

you tried to connect the two. To solve this problem, we could shrink the piece on the right
down vertically until the lengths of the
two sides matched.
When would you actually want to
do this though? I actually used this
technique on my Sliggoo plush. Sliggoo’s
body is composed of a front body piece
and two side body pieces; the front
piece has a curved border which
connects to the side body piece, which
has a straight border. This gives the
plush the correct curved shape from the
front, but allows the side of the body to connect
smoothly to the front.
 6

Applying the Law of One Length: A Simple Cone

Already, we can begin applying the Law of One

Length to begin making patterns. Let’s try to
develop a pattern for the cone on the right, with
a base radius of 𝑟 and an altitude of ℎ. How
should we go about creating this pattern?
First of all, we know that we would like a flat
circle to cut out as the base of our cone. The
question remains as to how we plan to create the
pointy part of the cone. Suppose that we decide
to make this point by joining together 4
“triangular” pieces. In essence, would like our
triangular pieces to correspond with the area on
the surface of the cone corresponding to the area
ABC on the right. What should the shape of one
of these triangles look like?
Applying the Law of One Length, we can deduce
a few things. First, two of the sides of the
triangle should have length 𝑠, indicated by the long grey line AB (and AC). What is the
length of 𝑠? By the Pythagorean Theorem, we have that 𝑠 = √𝑟 2 + ℎ2 . So, for instance, if the
radius of our base was 3 and the height was 4, then 𝑠 = √32 + 42 = √25 = 5. Finally, the
last side must have a length corresponding to the arc 𝐴𝐶. However the arc encompassed by
𝐴𝐶 is one-fourth of the circumference of the circle. Since the circumference of a circle is
equal to 2𝜋𝑟, we have that the final length on the pattern piece should have a length of
2𝜋𝑟 𝜋𝑟
= .
4 2
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Listed to the right are two

possible pattern pieces for
the cone. You might ask,
“which one is the correct
pattern piece”? The answer
is that, well, neither of them
really is. Remember, strictly
speaking, it’s very difficult
to replicate “perfect”
geometric objects. This is
the importance of testing
your patterns! Both of the
pattern pieces to the right
satisfy the Law of One
Length, meaning that you
could use them both to create the originally-mentioned cone. However, you might find that
the pattern on the left would give you a short cone with a slight bulge to it, owing to the fact
that attaching a straight line to a circular border would cause the triangular piece to
contort a bit. Furthermore, by using the pie-shaped piece on the right, you would gain the
nice property that the distance from the tip of the cone to any part of the base of the cone
would be the same. Therefore, I would choose to use the piece on the right. It is up to you to
use your own intuition to inform your decisions on how to design your patterns.
(Note: Neither of these pieces are actually to scale, don’t actually print these out to make a
cone.)
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Problem-Solving with the Law of One Length

The main power of the Law of One Length is that it

allows you to decompose complex body shapes into simple
questions about distances. For instance, imagine that we were
attempting to create some sort of body piece, and after
measuring everything out we had the following three
conditions:

 We know two of the borders must meet up at a right

angle with given lengths, corresponding with the black
lines on the right.
 We know one of the borders must have a specific
curved shape, and must connect to the very bottom of
the black border at point A. This is indicated by the blue curve AC.
 The final border must connect points B and C together, and must have a length of 𝐿.
This is indicated by the red text in the image.
In this situation, we already know the lengths of all of our borders. The Law of One
Length mandates that we know the lengths of each of the edges we’re trying to connect;
otherwise we have very little information on which to proceed. However, given all this
information, we can proceed fairly easily. How can we end up with a final pattern piece to
use?
First, we know that there must be a line of length L
coming out of point B. What are all the possible lines of
length L coming out of B? The endpoints of all the
possible lines will be traced out by a circle of radius 𝐿
with a center at B, indicated by the path 𝐶 ∗ .
 9

Once we’ve traced out all the

possible endpoints for the line
segment BC, we need to determine
the placement of curve AC so that AC
retains its shape, but endpoint C ends
up somewhere on 𝐶 ∗ . To figure this
out, we draw a line segment between
A and C, and then once again draw
out a corresponding circle 𝐷∗ ,
indicating all the locations of C if we
were to rotate the curve AC around
the point A. Notice that we have two
points of intersection at 1 and 2;
however the point of intersection at
2 is clearly wrong since if we were to
rotate AC so that C ended up at point
2, the pattern would cross over itself.
Therefore, it appears that 1 is the
point at which C should be located.
After rotating curve AC to end up at
point 1, and drawing a line segment
between B and 1 which has length L,
we end up with the pattern piece to
the right.
To confirm, we have reached
our original goal; we did not change
the shape of the black border, we did
not change the shape of the curve AC
(we merely rotated it), and the
straight line connecting points B and
C has length L. We reached this
pattern piece knowing only the
lengths of each side and basic
geometric intuition. Bear in mind
that this is the exact process I used to
find the pattern piece for Sliggoo’s
body, just with different shapes.
 10

Pillow-Sewing: A Naïve Approach to Making Patterns

Note that when I say “naïve”, I do not mean “bad”; I mean that the method of pattern
making I am about to describe is something that is perfectly intuitive and something a
beginner would naturally want to do, but could nonetheless be improved upon.
Naturally, very few plushies are going to be just simple geometric
shapes (unless you’re making “cubies”, but if that’s all you’re out to
make you’re probably not going to be needing anything I say in this
tutorial). For instance, let’s suppose we were attempting to make a
pattern for Togetic on the right. In particular, let’s focus on the body.
Ignoring the colored triangles, one can see that Togetic’s body is
symmetric; therefore, you could just attempt to trace out the shape of
the body, make a mirrored copy, and then sew the two on top of each
other. If you did that, you would end up with a pattern piece like the one
below. Just make a mirror copy, sew them together leaving the neck
open, and then stuff! Easy, huh?
Not so fast; while the end result you would get would
look somewhat close to your target, the main thing you would
be immediately disappointed by is that the body would not be
nearly wide enough. It would not look as round and ovoid as
desired, but rather would look thin, with kinks at the seams of
the pattern. This is why I refer to this technique as “pillow-
sewing”; the end result would look more like a pillow. While this
approach may work for some shapes, it would not work for
geometric shapes with depth, like spheres (you couldn’t take
two circles and sew them together to get a sphere). However,
this two-dimensional approach is leading us in the right direction; we need a way to take
this simple two-dimensional approach and give it the desired width.
 11

Gussets

Gussets are one of the most fundamental

tools in pattern-making. A gusset typically refers
to any long, strip-like piece of fabric which is
used to help widen a plushie. For example,
Goodra is a Pokémon with a naturally-occurring
gusset piece; the mauve belly helps widen the
overall shape of Goodra’s body, which is defined
by the light lavender portion of its body.
However, even when there are not clear color
indicators of where a gusset might belong,
gussets are still incredibly useful for making
plushies. They’re used to widen bellies, widen
heads, and all sorts of other applications. For
instance, if you look at the Sliggoo plush beneath,
you can see that Sliggoo’s shell is being widened
by a strip of fabric with uniform width in the
middle, another example of a gusset.
Gussets are very useful because they allow us
to correct for the pitfalls of the pillow-sewing
method, meaning that we can often start a pattern
with a naïve “pillow-sewn” pattern, and then add a
gusset to give the body the desired shape. However,
gussets add an extra dimension, literally and
figuratively, of difficulty in designing a pattern,
because designing a gusset requires you to think in
the third dimension, as opposed to a pillow-sewn
design where you can just trace over a single 2-D
reference. Gussets require you to think about a 3-D
object from several different viewpoints, and then
synthesize the components of this 3-D object into 2-D
pattern pieces.
 12

Designing a Gusset

As mentioned, designing a gusset can be quite difficult if you don’t know how to get
started. However, there is a fairly methodical approach that can help you get started.
1. First, determine the length of the gusset to be made, and then create a vertical line of
that length.
2. Mark points at regular intervals on the part of the pattern where the gusset is to be
attached, and mark those corresponding points on the vertical line.
3. At each marked point, determine the amount by which the body should be widened
at that point. Then draw a horizontal line of that length intersecting the
corresponding point on the vertical line.
4. Once all the points are marked, draw a curve as best as you can that passes through
the endpoints of the horizontal line.
5. Resize the gusset so that the length of the curve is the same as the original length of
the vertical line. (Remember, curves are always longer than lines when they start
and end at the same points!)
Let’s run through this example using Togetic above as an example. We would like to attach
a gusset to Togetic’s body on the right in order to make Togetic’s body wide. Walking
through the steps, we have:
1. To the right, I have marked Togetic’s body with a
start and an end. These points are where the
gusset will be attached to the body. I’ve then
marked out regular intervals between the part of
the body between the Start and the End, nine of
them to be exact. Your marks don’t have to be at
completely even intervals. Once we do this, you
can approximate the length of the curve from
Start to End by summing the lengths of the line
intervals between Start and 1, 1 and 2, etc., all the
way up to 9 and End. In this case, the curve ends
up being about 300 pixels long, so I will create a corresponding vertical line
of 300 pixels, which is to the right of the body piece.
 13

2. Next, we mark this vertical line with the points corresponding to points 1
through 9. The end result looks something like the line to the right.
3. At each of the points, we decide how much width needs to be added to the
body. For this particular body piece, we will assume that at S and E, the width
of the gusset will be zero. We then need to determine how much width will be
added at points 1 through 9.

This is a process which can be tricky and depends on the nature of the plush.
However, sometimes you can make some mathematical assumptions which
can help give an explicit number on how long the horizontal line should be.
For instance, suppose we’re at point 6 on Togetic’s body and we’re attempting
to determine how much width to add at point 6. To get an estimate, we can
assume that if you were to take a vertical cross-section of Togetic’s body at
point 6, then that cross-section would take the shape of a circle. If this is the
case, how much width is missing? If we were to sew the two mirrored body
pieces together, then the total
length around that part of the
body would be 2𝐿. However,
if this is actually supposed to
be a circle, then circles have a
circumference of 2𝜋𝑟. In this
𝐿
case, 𝑟 = 2, so the
circumference of the circle is
𝜋𝐿. Then the amount of
“missing” width between the
circle and the body is
approximately 𝜋𝐿 − 2𝐿 =
(𝜋 − 2)𝐿. In this case, we would choose to make the
horizontal line through point 6 have the corresponding
width of (𝜋 − 2)𝐿.

However, in other cases you may not wish to assume that

the cross section is perfectly circular; perhaps you think it’s
more of an ellipse. Whatever the case, the basic idea is to
determine the amount of “missing” width, and then draw a
line of that length through the corresponding point on the
vertical line. An example of what a finished drawing might
look like is to the right.
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4. Trace out the curve formed by these horizontal lines. As I

mentioned, the curve doesn’t need to pass perfectly
through the horizontal lines; I would focus on making a
natural-looking, smooth curve. The gusset piece on the
right is the result once I trace out the resulting design from
step 3.
5. Remember that our original goal was to create a gusset
that would cleanly attach from Start to End; this
corresponded to the original length of the vertical line.
However, when we sew the gusset onto the body, we are
sewing the curve of the gusset onto the curve of the body,
but the curve on the gusset has a larger length than that of
the vertical line! If you were to attach the gusset to the
body as is, you would find that the gusset would go way
beyond the End point.

To fix this, just approximate the length of the curve again, and then scale the piece
down appropriately. For instance, if my original vertical line was 300 pixels tall, but
I ended up with a curve that was 400 pixels long, then we would like to scale down
300
the gusset piece by a factor of 400 = 75%.

Notice that steps 1 and 2 can be a little bit tedious.

If you have access to Photoshop, you can use the Ruler
Tool to help aid in these calculations; just drag the
ruler tool across two points, and it’ll tell you the
corresponding distance between the two points. You
can also have Photoshop keep track of your
measurements so you can export them to an Excel
sheet and sum up the total lengths there.
 15

Darts

Gussets are great for widening patterns as well as giving them curvature, but
sometimes there isn’t enough room on a pattern piece to fit a gusset, or sometimes a gusset
fails to provide the desired curvature. In these situations, darts can come to the rescue.
In order to understand darts, you first
need to understand a little bit about sphere
patterns. To the right are two pieces of a
typical four-piece sphere pattern. If you were
to sew together four of these pieces, you
would end up with a shape that resembles a
sphere.
Suppose that we overlapped the two
pieces as shown in the bottom image into a
single piece. We see that we have a little
notch in the top and bottom of the piece
which we can sew together. When sewn
together, these darts would provide a little bit
of curvature, similar to the curvature of a
sphere. As such, we have created a pattern
piece which by itself can have curvature. These little
notches are examples of darts.
In short, a dart is any sort of notch or cut
which is placed into a pattern piece with the
intention that you sew the dart together before
attaching the piece to other pattern pieces. Darts
have a variety of purposes, but all of them involve
reshaping a pattern piece into a more desired form.
Darts can be used for a wide variety of
purposes, and I will admit that I don’t understand
them fully, so I’ll refer you to Voodoo-Tiki’s Pony
Mane and Tail Tutorial which, despite the name,
contains advice about darts (and other pattern-
related tips) which apply to any pattern-making
endeavor.
 16

When Mathematics and Reality Collide

I would like to take a moment to make a disclaimer which I probably should’ve put
in the beginning of the document; everything I have just documented represents my
personal approach to making patterns. I’m willing to bet that most plushie makers
probably don’t ever pull out calculators when designing their patterns, let alone export
numerical data sets into Excel (although who knows, maybe I’m wrong). Furthermore, I am
willing to concede that this approach does not work 100 percent of the time, and that in
recent times I have gotten quite stuck on making patterns. However, this does not mean
that the aforementioned approach is devoid of value; indeed, I owe the fact that I came this
far in plush-making to my rigorous approach to making patterns. Nonetheless it is
important to acknowledge the shortcomings of my approach, of which there are many.
The number one pitfall with the approach I
mentioned is that it fails to take into account that
pattern pieces are printed out onto fabric, which is
inherently stretchy. For example, consider the
cone pattern described earlier in this document. If
we were making the cone out of construction
paper and leaving it hollow, then there would be
no issue. However, the fact that we are making the
cone out of fabric, which comes in various degrees
of stretchiness, and then stuffing the cone to
rigidity means that the end result is going to have
a bulge to it, which will affect the final product’s shape. For instance, consider my Carbink
plush. I began Carbink’s plush pattern with the assumption that Carbink’s rock base was a
pyramid with an octagon base. However, as you can see, once stuffing is applied, the top of
the octagonal pyramid bulges upward and there is a clear outward bulge on the rest of the
rock.
For another example of a pitfall, consider the gusset we designed for Togetic’s body.
In determining the width of the gusset at point 6, I made the innocuous assumption that,
without the gusset, the cross-section of the fully-stuffed pattern after being sewn would
have a perimeter of length 2𝐿. However this may not be the case; after being packed with
stuffing, the fabric is likely to stretch to such a degree that the perimeter when stuffed
would be, say, 2.3𝐿. This would mean that my original estimate for the width of the gusset
would have been too large, and as a result the final pattern might turn out fatter/wider
than expected. The only way around this is to use your intuition; if your mathematical
estimate is consistently too large, then in the future, still use the mathematical approach to
estimate a width, but then scale it down according to what you’ve previously observed.
 17

An alternative title for this section could have been “The Importance of Pattern
Testing”, because really that’s what it all boils down to. You can make theories about
pattern shapes and tests until you’re blue in the face, but if you never stop yourself in the
middle of the process to actually ensure that the shape you’re envisioning is the shape
you’ll get, then you’re inevitably going to end up wasting a lot of fabric when you try to
make your plush and it turns out different from what you imagined.
I’d like to mention two other things, both of which I briefly mentioned in my
Beginner’s Tutorial. First, don’t be afraid to modify existing patterns. If there’s a feature
from a pattern you previously used that you liked, e.g. you really liked the shape of the
head, attempt to modify that pattern into something you can use for your current project.
Even if you can’t directly reuse the pattern piece, try to identify the properties of the
pattern piece which gave you the design element you liked. In particular, for me, I’ve made
a lot of plushies for Pokémon with very round, circular designs (e.g. Goomy, Slurpuff, and
Aromatisse), so I relied immensely on modifying the basic four-piece sphere pattern for my
needs. In fact, if you look at my Goomy pattern, you’ll notice that the tops of the heads are
just the top half of the sphere patterns. Take advantage of the resources that other people
have provided for you.
The second thing I want to reiterate is the importance of taking risks. Sometimes,
you’ll have no idea how to replicate a particular feature on something you’re making. For
instance, I attempted to design Togetic’s head, and had no idea at first how to replicate the
spikes on its head. If you have some crazy ideas on how you might pattern out a feature,
don’t be afraid to try it out! Especially when it comes to pattern-making, failures are
absolutely constructive in that they guide you in the right direction and also help reconcile
pattern-making theory with reality. However if your crazy idea works out, then you have a
new patterning technique which you know you can apply to all of your future projects!
Furthermore, when you test a pattern and it turns out just as you wanted, it’s like striking
gold. Never get discouraged!
 18

Conclusion

I realize that this guide may be

potentially overwhelming to some readers,
especially those who are not inclined
towards mathematics. That’s perfectly OK!
As I mentioned, everyone has their own
personal ways they make patterns; some
people are able to make them without ever
hitting the drawing board! I am perhaps on
the polar opposite of that spectrum; I like
to have every step mapped out before
proceeding with a project. One advantage
of my method is that it gives me well-
documented patterns and techniques
which I can use for future projects.
Hopefully, the excruciating detail
(or lack thereof) with which I’ve described my techniques should convey to you that there
absolutely is a lot that goes into making patterns! If pattern-making was an effortless
endeavor, I guarantee you there’d be a lot more fledgling plushie makers making awesome
things. As such, even if you didn’t understand what was going on, I hope that you at least
walked away with an appreciation for the complexity of patterns.

Thanks for reading!

If you have any questions, leave a comment or contact me through dA or
Tumblr. I’m always happy to answer questions about technique, advice, etc.
(Even if I may not be the most qualified person to do so.)