And this is a rather late reply...

Yup, I've sewn quite a few soft toys. Here's some of my recent ones.

Patterns, well, I make them myself. Its like boxes and nets, except the shape you want to make is a really complicated box, so it has a complex net to go with it. I sorta take apart the shape I want to make in my head, and draw out the pattern. Sometimes I edit it as I go along. If there's bits I'm stuck on, I look at existing soft toys and how those patterns are made, and edit it a bit to suit. It's kinda hard to describe how I do it, really.