maiji: Wobbly Claude full of love

[image: Photo of a handmade felt doll of Claude C. Kenni from Star Ocean 2. He has little blue shank-button eyes, pink oval blushes on his cheeks, and a pink sewn X for a mouth. He's wearing his recognizable red headband, a little black shirt, white pants and tan shoes with various green, black and white cut-pattern shapes on them. He's lying on an olive-green jacket with the iconic Pangalactic Federation shoulder patch design.]Yesterday was International Fanworks Day, so orange and I got together to nerd out working on fanfics and fanart! It was also discount chocolate day the day after V-day, so we also went hunting for discount chocolate. I wore my Claude-themed cardigan (a thrift store find that I jazzed up with a cosplay patch from Quid Vis) and brought Wobbly Claude along to celebrate. We had so much fun listening to '90s JRPG soundtracks and looking up silly stream-of-consciousness things and chatting and snacking. Nerd nerd nerd, hahah.I made Wobbly Claude in maybe 2009-ish. At the time, orange had found some cute patterns on the internet and was very enthusiastic about sewing custom dolls, so I gamely joined in and we had a craft day doodling and measuring and sewing and poking ourselves with needles. As you can see, my cutting and sewing were rather wobbly, but as orange says, "Wobbly Claude but full of love". Yes!![Photo of hand holding Wobbly Claude. The cut pieces for the designs on his shoes are literally floating milimetres off from the actual shoe bases.]Back then, I lost steam by the time I got to his shoes and just glued the patterns on. Even after my Star Ocean 2 passion went into hibernation, I couldn't bear to get rid of him, so he hung around various places in my room, his shoes constantly falling off here and there until I finally got fed up and shoved them into a box. Now that he has returned to glory!!! in my heart, it was hilarious to discover that over a decade later most of the glue had dried up and separated, and the pieces were clinging on through sheer static electricity... but nothing had been lost! This past week I spent a few evenings sewing everything onto his shoes more properly, motivated by the fact that I didn't want them to fall apart and get ingested by orange's cat. It felt a little reverse Shoemaker's Elves, haha.[Photo of hand holding one of Wobbly Claude's shoes, the green pieces stitched on while the black and white pieces are still in progress. A red tin full of spools of coloured thread and other sewing supplies is visible in the background.][Photo of Wobbly Claude being held upside down at an angle so you can see one of the finished shoes, with all the patterns stitched in place. His other foot is bare.][Photo of fluffy orange and white tabby cat curiously sniffing Wobbly Claude's arm.]I also showed my efforts fixing the shoes to my mom. She's been on a knitting kick for a while and enthusiastically said, "Do you want me to make him some more clothes?" She used to make knit clothing for my teddy bears when I was a kid, including lots of cute dresses. I remembered that there's a PA in the game where Rena, Celine and Precis imagine Claude in different outfits, and one of them is a ridiculously frilly dress. So I sent her a screenshot of the pixelly sprite and asked her to please use it as her inspiration. She said, "Why is this so blurry?" and I was like "The original image is tiny, I had to zoom in a ton..."[Photo of hand a hand pulling up Wobbly Claude's shirt to show his belly, which is then connected to the white of his pants/legs at the waist.]Wobbly Claude's shirt is actually removable, but I'm a bit concerned about doing so because his head is so big and floppy... so the dress would just go on top of everything he's already wearing.Anyways, I'm excited to see what my mom comes up with! If it works out, stay tuned for followup Wobbly Claude fashion show maybe some time this year.