How to catch a wild Salamon...

So... I had always thought about this, but never the time nor the urgent need to make my own plushie accessory for a cosplay. And to start with something I treasured as much as Gokudera's box animal Uri would have been out of the question anyway xD.
But this December it happened: I made my very first plushie and not even for myself or from a series that I'm much into.
It all started with the funny experiment to participate in the cosplay themed secret santa event from the cosplay forum of the German community animexx.de. The person I had to play santa for seemed to be quite hyped about cosplaying lots of versions of Kari from Digimon among other plans. But this was the one that seemed to be most wished for. So I thought about Kari's accessories... and as she wrote that she's not a sewing expert while not bad at crafting I figured I should make a plushie.
I'm very grateful that my roommate suggested not to take on the extreme challenge of making a Gatomon at once ^^''' but start with something less difficult instead. So... I went for the rookie level version: Salamon/Plotmon.

Well... I underestimated this challenge as well -.-''. As I didn't find a pattern out on the web and my 3-D-imagination is really bad, I had to make lots of tries first for the head. It evolved from looking like a frog to something round, till I decided to screw this all and found a Raichu head online (http://renegar-kitsune.deviantart.com/art/Raichu-Sewing-Tutorial-153382876) which I just adopted. Best decision ever. But the body was just as bad to make... During the process my dummy looked really more like a duck than a doggy xD.

First dummy which deserved the name. Looks like a duck, doesn't it? ^^''

Even though I still was not content with it I decided to go for the legs because if I didn't figure out how to make these I could also forget the whole idea.

Sorry first try of a leg -.-''

I messed this up as well for quite some tries. I tried to take the shape of the leg twice and sewed in a tiny circle at the bottom. I didn't get it shut there till I finally decided to handsew the circle to the rest and altered the pattern a little bit.

In the end my pattern looked kind of like this (coming off with this was the most frustrating part by far and took most of the time):

More or less final pattern (the body was a bit adjusted though later on)

The first two parts on top are the head. You have to cut out the part with the snout (one times mirrored) twice and also two times the oval part. Then sew the four of them together as in Renegar-kitsune's tutorial on DA (see link above). It's important to leave a little opening at the bottom in order to be able to turn it from the left to the right side.

The body was made similiar to these with 2 oval parts and two parts (one of them mirrored) which contained the rather big tail. Again it was important to leave a small opening.

The legs were made as already said with the leg-part once mirrored and a tiny circle at the bottom. In the upper part also a small hole was left to turn the fabric again. 

Now I just had to cut everything out of my very plushy fabric. As it didn't have a plain side drawing and sewing became a challenge of its own ^^'''.... I'm really happy that I practiced beforehand with the dummies. Anyway... finally all the parts were finished and assembled.  Oh, I forgot the part not mentioned in the upper row are the ears (cut out twice per ear and sewn together) xD. They were really easy to make.

So... the next part was stuffing everything out with fiberfill and every leg plus the body got an additional small pouch (sewn shut) inside in order to make it later able to stand. Afterwards all the little holes were finally sewn shut by hand and the single parts thus finished.

The single parts finally finished :)!

This was, when the real work only started... (Besides remaking the body which I also did cause I was not content with the one shown in the picture ^^''. The next step was finishing the head.

Therefore I made a pattern for the eyes out of different layers of felt and glued them together. I got help with the pattern from my roommate cause she draws much better than me and sees mistakes regarding the anatomy or expression. Afterwards after trying what it would look like I hand-stitched the nose and afterwards the mouth and hand-sewed the eyes to the head as well.

The finished head. Finally it looked kinda cute! :)

Then I only had to sew all the other parts together... only... I guess I tested the nerves of my roommate quite a lot always asking her if this or that part looked well in place ^^''...

In the end I finally had Salamon finished... and just to make that collar thing. I used some rests from Drakon's fake leather for it, sewed two seams on the sides with my sewing machine, handstitched the pattern onto it afterwards while being very creative cause not every single one of the symbols was shown in my reference picture. Plus I added a button in the back so that it could be taken off for washing or whatever reasons...

Afterwards I wrote the message for Salamon's new owner, added the other stuff I had gotten for her and packed very late at night xD. Still it got finished again, arrived some days before Christmas and I even got the honour that my little plushie (I had nicknamed it "Plüschvieh" meanwhile due to my slight frustration xD; 'vieh' is the German word for cattle or a slightly rude word for animal in general) was selected as a crafting favourite at animexx.de :). Never happened to me before which made me really happy although barely someone seemed to have noticed and I'm not even sure if it was deserved. Still... pushed my self-confidence a bit ;), which is rather a good thing atm.^^ 

The finished "Plüschvieh" aka Plotmon/Salamon