How to make a giant worm on a string plush

So my good friend Zoey loves worms on string so I am getting one for them for christmas (last christmas, 7 months ago) and they were like show how to make it on website and I was like sure. Cuz also like the brushed yarn meathod is a collosall pain in the ass and like a huggable stuffed animal type thing is better and easier to do at the absurd scale truly befitting a giant worm on a string. Also, for some reason, there isn't anywhere that really explains the math of proportions of a tube plush, so here it is for noone to ever find ig.

I used GIMP to make the pattern, and a sewing machine to do all the hard shit

Pattern making

Already fucked up the proportions on this once (yes apparently a worm has proprtions) so imma make a good pattern to do it right and also make the biggest worm with the fabric that I have.

  1. Create a new GIMP document (ctl+N) that is the scale of your fabric. I just multiplied the length in inches by 10 to get 900x600.
  2. Add picture of worm for scale
  3. Realize that the worm picture is itself not to scale
  4. fuck it its good enough
  5. Add a new layer and trace around the outside of the worm
  6. remove that layer
  7. turn it sideways to measure things easier

Okay, now time for some math. Just measuring across the worm from this perspective will only give us the diameter of the worm, but our fabric represents the circumfrance, so we need to find the diameter of the worm at a couple points along it, then use that to find the circumfrance, then use that to design our pattern.

  1. Divide the worm into slices, and measure the size of each slice. the little coordinates tool in the bottom left of the window is good, just take the y-cord of the top of the worm - the y-cord of the bottom.
  2. take each of these values and multiply by pi to find the totall ammount of fabric you will need at that point in the worm's body. I got [31,47,47,141,188,251,235,94,62,47]

Now we have our worm's measurements. No matter what size your final worm, the proportions between these numbers will always stay the same. However, if you just take a single piece of fabric and cut it in these dimentions and sew the seam, itll end up looking lopsided because all of the extra fabric only gets added along the seam side, leaving the opposite side straight. Solution: cut 4 pieces of fabric, and do multiple seam lines to allow the fabric to bee added evenly along the worm (this also has the side effect of using fabric more efficently). So, my new dimentions are: [8,12,12,36,48,64,60,24,16,12], but I always have to remember to make 4 of these pieces and stitch them together.

  1. New window with the same size.
  2. Draw a straight line across. I recommend making it a length easily divisible by 8.
  3. put a vertical guide where every one of your measurements are going to be.
  4. draw a line the length of your measurment, centered on the line you have, to scale with the length of the total worm. (since my original worm was 800 px long and my new line is as well, I dont need to change anything. If my new line was 1600, I would need to double everything.)
  5. clear away the guides
  6. Make a path connecting the tops of the little posts using a smooth line. You also have some discression here about how the overall thing is shaped.
  7. Now, fuck around with it to find the best way to fit it on your fabric. Remember you need 4 total, and that you should leave room around each thing for shit to get fucked up.

Now to make it on actuall paper. If you have a suitably big printer, print it. If you are normal, you gonna have to do this the hatd way. Essentially, fuigre out how much you have scaled the pattern up in fitting it on your fabric and scale all your measurments by that. Then, tape together a whole bunch of paper and re-do what you did in the last block of steps. For me, I increased it by 140%, so I need to times everything by 1.68, getting a worm that is 134 inches long (11 ft. 2 inches) with the proportions (also converting to inches by dividing by 10) (also adding pipes to help me keep track of what I need to measure on the piece) [1.3,2,2 | 2,6,9,10.5 | 10.5,10,4,2.5,2] (if these numbers seem small, remember its all multiplied by 10, and we need to add seam allowences and such) Remember: read the whole section, your kinda doing a bunch of different things at once here.

  1. Fuigre out how long your worm is gonna be in real inches and feet and tape together paper till you get to that long (for me, about 8 inch paper)
  2. If doing it in sections like me, just make sure that the length of each section is long enough to fit whatever you have got in it.
  3. Draw measure cut, adding a seam allowance. I did 1/4 in.,should have done 1/2. Remember that your numbers are the total width, not the width when folded in half.