Hand-Sewn Free-Range Plush Monsters

In this classic, 2008 project from Craft: 06, readers learned how to hand-sew friendly plush monsters. Featured photo by Garry McLead.

My anthropomorphic creations always look like post-apocalyptic amigurumi. It’s probably because I like to work free-form and I’m a little goofy on the inside.

While playing with commercial felt one day, I managed to create a hand-sewn “special friend” named Johnson. He had a comb-over and a total of six fingers, and he was glorious. In the five years since then, I’ve made dozens more and never the same one twice. With the nifty mix-and-match templates provided here and a deliberate rejection of precision, you can create an endless variety of special friends for you to love.

Illustrations by Tim Lillis