#corroboree

Cardamom seemed to be the plush version of a bad thylacine taxidermy, with wonky bulging eyes and a potatoish head…

At first I tried a bit of thread sculpting on their face to fix them, but it was clear that left eye was a problem - not only off placement, but pretty wobbly too.

I opened up a short seam under their chin and unstuffed their head for a closer look. I could see why that eye was wobbly: the plastic washer was broken and not holding on well!

Eye removed, and time to find a replacement that matched the other eye and fit into the rubber eyelid piece. I had none the right size in brown, but some blue ones fit. Sure, why not!

Before installing the new eye, I had to add a few stitches to the loose hole left behind, reinforcing it and moving the hole forwards a bit in the process.

Now to put back the stuffing and sew up the chin with a ladder stitch.

The fabric was a little damaged at the edges, so I placed my stitches a little further from the edge than the original stitching. This also has the bonus of narrowing the chin slightly, as it was pretty wide anyway…

Now to do the thread sculpting again! I’ll show you how that works this time.

Pass the needle and thread through the head from one eye corner to the other. (I like to pull just hard enough that the thread knot pops inside without popping out the other side, but if this is hard to do you can just hide the knot under the chin or something.)

Do a few back and forth stitches between the eyes and pull, and the face starts to become a shape!

Once the eyes are nicely pulled in, another stitch or two between each eye and the chin/throat (in a V shape) can help improve the head and throat shape even more. You can then tie the thread end under the chin.

Face all better! Next morning I decided to fix Cardamom’s slightly sprawling legs.

This was basically thread sculpting too, starting from one leg, going through the tummy to the other side and back.

The seams under each leg were also a little damaged! You can see the holes forming around each stitch. An added row of ladder stitch here helped to reinforce them as well as bringing the legs in a bit more neatly.

Front and back legs all positioned directly under the body, and Cardamom is standing with much more confidence!