An early Nauga Ad.
So, in the way things tend to go, I had some leftover polyfil. About 3lbs worth, at a guess. Naugeleh@weirder.earth (Mastodon) had some Naugahyde, given to her by a friend. The natural conclusion here is that I needed to make a Nauga.
If you aren't aware, Naugahyde is the brand name of Uniroyal's Vinyl coated fabrics, originally invented in a rubber plant in Naugatuk, Connecticut. In March of 1966, the Nauga was invented as an advertisement conceit. The bizarre stuffed creature was the 'animal' that this faux-leather had come from. It being, of course, Nauga-hyde. While the story being told has changed throughout the years, the key element is that Naugas shed their skin, leaving behind the Naugahyde that is sold by the company, making it a cruelty-free leather-like option.
An early Nauga Ad.
By happenstance, the Nauga became Naugeleh's family animal, and they have their own additions to the lore, as well as many of the Nauga toys that Uniroyal have been producing from off-cuts in various colour combinations since the 60s.
== The Plan
So, I had some of the pieces of what I needed, but not all of them.
Naugas are not single-colour creatures. I had one colour of naugahyde, that I was happy to use as the base, as there was plenty of it, and it was a beautiful blue and green pattern, but I had no secondary or tertiary colours. I didn't want to purchase new, and I wanted to make sure I was using genuine Naugahyde, for no practical reason, just because it matched the concept.
But Ebay should solve that.
So I laid out my plan; get 1 (optimally 2) more off-cuts of Naugahyde, create a pattern from the various photos I had, cut out, sew, and stuff a Nauga, then give it to Naugeleh :D
== Enacting the Plan
So I had ebay start telling me about every naugahyde listing it had, in a daily update email.
For months, I saw listing after listing for Naugahyde-like fabrics, Naugahyde dolls, Naugahyde furniture, Naugahyde letterman jackets, but no small cuts of spare Naugahyde.
Finally, I saw a listing that had promise. Someone was selling of a huge lot of Naugahyde, various colours and dimensions. The only problem was, they were on the other side of the country, and had listed it as "local pick up only". As they had full bolts of upholstery vinyl, I didn't blame them. But in the photographs of their listing, I saw a couple of significantly smaller pieces, in red and gold. I wrote to the seller, and asked whether they would be willing to part out the small pieces and send them to me by mail. They agreed, and we settled on a very satisfactory price! I was going to have all the fabric I needed for this Nauga, at less than the cost of the new Nauga toys that Uniroyal continues to sell.
I got our sewing machine in working order and looked forward to the Naugahyde's arrival.
== The ..complication..
Turns out I'm garbage at conceptualizing how large something is from what numbers are being shared with me.
The seller very clearly told me that the red piece was 90x53 inches, and the gold was 55x52 inches.
I didn't think about more than that it would fit in a box and ship to me. And it wasn't so little as to be useless.
So, I was somewhat surprised when I opened the box and pulled out lengths of material larger than me.
Now, I suppose most people would just be excited, realize they may be able to make as many as 3 or 4 Naugas out of the material they have by surprise. But no, not me.
My thought is, "...How large of a Nauga would all that make??"
Some estimating, a few drawings, a lot of fabric measuring later... the answer turned out to be a bit over 4 feet tall.
So over dinner, I announced to my household that with the materials I had acquired, I could make a 4' tall Nauga. I asked whether a Nauga the size of a small piece of furniture was something we wanted to have. Naugeleh giggled, and I knew I had to take this to its craziest conclusion.
== Actually doing the sewing
From the scale I had arrived at, I drew the outline of the body and arms on the red fabric, and then cut out those pieces.
Inner Facing of the body pieces.
Then I traced out the eye ruff and the mouth pieces, and cut them out in blue/green and gold.
Half a Nauga, unsewn
Then I set up a picnic table and the sewing machine on it in our living room, and sewed those pieces to the front.
My sewing set up, with a Nauga front hanging off the side
Then I sewed the arms each together, then flipped it inside out, as I saw Nauga arms typically were formed. I then sewed those into the body, along with sewing the two body pieces together, inside out. Flipping it all back rightways round was a challenge, but it worked.
A sewn, but not yet stuffed Nauga body, next to it's significantly smaller cousin, an official Nauga toy, for comparison.
At this point, I pulled out the leftover polyfil, and knew immediately.. I was going to need to buy more. A lot more.
15 lbs of polyfil later..
The stuffed Nauga proved to be too fat to let my sewing machine in close enough to sew up the feet, so I had to do it by hand.
For some reason I decided to do so at this ab-workout angle.
And finally it was done.
Sewing the pieces together initially took most of one weekend, and the filling and sewing up by hand took another. After the face had been cut out, it was decided that while traditional Naugas have eyes that are also made of Naugahyde, that we were going to break from tradition, and instead purchase 4" diameter googly-eyes for our new friend. It didn't arrive until early in the week after it was otherwise finished, and then the adhesive wasn't up to the job of sticking to the vinyl, but after cleaning the existing adhesive off of the backs of the eyes and applying some heavy duty flexible craft glue, they stuck perfectly.
Our Nauga friend peering.
With the addition of the eyes, our Nauga friend was done.
The Completed Nauga
but I still have more Naugahyde, and a full 2lbs of leftover polyfil...
... I'll write more when I've gotten somewhere with the Naugettes I have planned!
Update!
While I still need to write up my Naugettes adventures properly (as of right now I've made 2), I was asked whether I had a pattern for my Nauga, as they want to build thier own. I didn't then but, as I still had build notes, I sort-of do now! I'll write up some proper build instructions at some point, but if you've been following along, you might be able to get by with these outlines (scale to your prefered Nauga size).
Quicknotes- You'll need 2 of A (front and back of the body), 4 of D (front and back of each arm) and E and F are optional, depending on how many colours you want to use. E is an underlayer for the mouth, F is a smaller top eye ruff.
