The Open School is full of talented artists of many mediums. SqueekityVex is a very talented student whose medium you may not expect. They design and craft fursuits. For those that aren’t aware of what a fursuit is, fursuits are worn by furries and The Furry Fandom is a subculture of people that enjoy dressing as and/or creating anthropomorphic animal characters. These characters are called Fursonas. SqueekityVex first discovered furries on Tik Tok back in 2019. They were enticed by the fandom and eventually started thinking about getting a fursuit. Since fursuits tend to be rather expensive, SqueekityVex figured the best way to get a fursuit was to actually make one themself.
Impressively, since 2019 SqueekityVex has made around 20 fursuits. With each new fursuit they hone their craft more and more. This is a craft that requires lots of time consuming work and perfecting specific techniques. Like learning anything, trial and error is an important part of the process. Some of SqueekityVex’s early pieces relied on the use of hot glue, but they quickly realized that actually sewing things together led to a higher quality fursuit. Anyone that has worked with hand stitching or sewing machines knows how grueling of a process sewing can be. SqueekityVex said that one fursuit can take them 50 to 60 hours to complete.
There are many stages to the process but SqueekityVex’s favorite part is sewing the ears and neck to the head. It requires hand stitching the pieces together, which they find to be quite a peaceful process. One of their least favorite parts of the process is using tape to pattern the base of the fursuit.
“Before I was just doing big, long strips of tape so it would go by faster. But after listening to other fursuit makers tell me I should be cutting little strips so that the pattern comes out easier, I’ve been doing that and it takes forever. Just constantly cutting strips and then putting them on the base and cutting strips and putting them on the base. For like, a whole day. It’s ridiculous.”
With all of these difficult and time consuming steps, it’s a relief to see it all start to come together. It is truly an impressive feat to be able to make even a single fursuit, let alone 20 fursuits. A fursuit maker has to learn an arsenal of different skills and work with various materials including foam, faux fur, fleece, minky, jersey, knit fabrics, and mesh. As well, the creativity required to design a fursona is very impressive in its own way. Every fursuit maker develops their own unique artistic style. Over the years of creating fursuits SqueekityVex certainly has developed their own distinctive style.
