This week features a customized bird plush; it is made out of a pillow that has a marshmallow-like texture! I also have been obsessed with a doodle I made of a fat finch and I wanted to make it.

I first saw these super soft pillows when I visited Japan in 2017 – I bought a cat mochi pillow at that time, and I got my friend to collect another 2 for me later that year. Soon after, similar pillows started to appear in costco, and now they are starting to spread around to other stores.

I have always wanted to find out why these pillows were so soft, but the ones from Japan were too cute to cut up. Now that there are not-as-cute designs in stores, I can finally find out their soft secrets.

I bought one of those super squishy marshmallow pillows from a Michael’s craft store, using a 40% off coupon. I’m sure there are some nicer, bigger ones out there, but I was looking for a mostly white one.

The procedure started off with visualizing the shape out of the pillow’s flattened cylinder shape. I tried reusing as many of its seams as I could, in hopes that it won’t bunch up or go wrinkly.

Next step was to use the seam ripper to cut out the face. I found out that it was the stretchiness of the fabric, along with the premium poly fiber, that created the marshmallow texture. Along the seams are some stretchy pieces of fabric, so maybe that helps it stretch back to shape?

I marked out the approximate area to shape and I cut a piece out of the side to make the head and butt shape; the cut out piece was important to preserve, so that I could reuse it as the tail. The face piece managed to supply me with enough material to make the tiny wingtips!

I’m not sure what it would look like if I laid out the fabric flat, but in 3D, the shape turned out perfect! Adding the beak, feet, and eyes, it practically is the spitting image of my doodle.

I don’t think the material is readily available to the public – I need to find a good supplier of this stretchy minky-like fabric, along with that super soft stuffing. Maybe if I found some more supplies, I could make more of these squishy finches! Here’s the final result:

Thanks for reading!