Well, I have recovered enough from my grievous thumb injury and mostly caught up on work to continue on with the undisclosed project.  Now for the big reveal!  I am working on making a Weighted Companion Cube.  Again.  This is not actually the first of these I have made.  Two years ago I had just finished playing Portal and was still feeling the pangs of loss over The Cube.  In my grief I decided to make an effigy for Mr. Boy.  At the time I was very satisfied and even made a crude tutorial.

The First Cube

Now it has recently been announced there will be a Portal 2!!  My inner fangirl went squee and decided I must make a new and improved homage to the beloved cube.  And so we are brought to the present.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, let Wikipedia enlighten you or better yet, go play the game.  In short, Portal is a delightful first person puzzle game and the Cube is part of it.  It’s hard to understand what the fuss is about unless you have played the game, but the wiki will give you some idea what I’m making.

Now back to what I was doing…

If you would like to follow along with this project listed below are the things you will need.  Just a warning, this isn’t a particularly expensive or difficult project, but it is a bit time consuming.  There are a lot of little pieces to put together and it is all handsewn.  It is not a quick afternoon project.  Unless you are some kind of sewing wizard.  I’m not quite at that level yet, but I’m working on it.

Materials

• 1 9×12″ sheet light gray felt
• 1 9×12″ sheet dark gray felt
• 1 9×12″ sheet light pink felt
• light pink thread
• light pink embroidery floss or pearl cotton
• gray thread
• polyester fiber fill (or other stuffing of choice)

Optional

• rice or plastic pellets for weight
• extra felt, fleece or quilt batting for padding

A few notes on materials: The first time I had trouble finding both colors of gray felt in the handy 9×12″ sheets so I used white and gray instead.  I eventually realized the felt can also be found on bolts in the regular fabric section.  A quarter of a yard is plenty for this project.  If you check the remnant bins at the fabric store (usually near the cutting tables) sometimes you get lucky and find the colors you want and it’s super cheap.  Another option is to buy all of it online where there is usually a greater selection all in one place.

A pattern might also be handy at this point, and luckily I happened to have made one.  This pattern, left unsized, makes a cube that is 3″ big.

PRINTABLE CUBE PATTERN

TERMS OF USE: This pattern is for personal use only!  You may not sell this pattern or cubes made from this pattern.  Please do not distribute copies of this pattern to others.  Instead please refer back to my blog so others can download it for themselves.  Make sense?

On to the nitty gritty!

The Making

1. First off I cut all the pieces out.  My pattern has the corresponding color and number of each piece conveniently marked, so I end up with 6 dark gray squares, 24 light gray corner pieces, 12 light grey tabs, 6 light grey circles, and 6 pink hearts.  I also wanted to add a bit more dimenstion to my cube so I cut out extra pieces to go underneath the circles and the tabs.  I have lots of fleece scraps so that’s what I used, but felt or quilt batting would work too.
   

   So many pieces!

   

   Make sure to trim these pieces slightly smaller than the pieces they will go under.

2. Starting with the bottom layer details, I used pink embroidery floss and the backstitch to add the lines that cross the center of the cube.   The stitching doesn’t go all the way to the center or the edges since other pieces will cover those areas.
   

   It helps to trace some guidelines first to keep the lines straight

3. Next the little hearts were sewn onto the gray circles using whip stitch.  From here on whip stitch is what I use to sew everything together unless I state otherwise.
   

   Aww…

4. Taking the padding and the just finished small circles, I carefully center and then sew them on top of the dark gray squares.
   

   The extra layer will make the center pop out more

   

   Now it is starting to look familiar

5. Now comes probably the most tedious part of this whole venture:  attaching all 32 corner pieces to the squares.  The corners are lined up on top of the squares with the edges sticking out and sewn together where they overlap.  It makes more sense if you look at the pictures.
   

   Some straight pins are handy at this point

   

   This is how the corners should line up

6. And that’s all for part one!  Now there are six finished sides and all that’s left is putting them together and stuffing.  Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion sometime next week.
   

   Progress is beautiful

And remember:

There’s no sense crying over every mistake
You just keep on trying till you run out of cake