Purple presents

This blog is about the gifts I have been making for my daughter. I love making things for children and I always like to include something handmade with my little girls presents. In the past I have made her a quilt with mini blanket and a caterpillar and a cooker. The quilt and blanket are loved and the caterpillar gets an occasional hug. She is often very enthusiastic about the things I make but she seems to think they take a few minutes when she goes to bed. She will see me looking at a pattern book and a couple of days later it is there. She once told me that she thought other Mummies spent a lot of time buying presents whereas I "just" make them.

I made toys for other children in the lead up to Christmas, I was hoping that she would fall in love with something and I could just make her one of those.... The problem was that she didn't fall in love with any of the things I made. She gave them all a little hug and helped me wrap them. I like to think that this is because they were already for somebody else in her mind. The alternative is that no child will love them and I couldn't think like that! I was stuck for ideas and getting increasingly frustrated then I remembered the thing that she had been commenting on over and over again.

My daughter loves Charlie and Lola books by Lauren Child (spoiler warning) and one of them is all about looking after a dog. The dog gets lost and when they find it they find two identical dogs. In the end they are told you can identify the correct dog by the tag on his collar. One of my daughters favourite toys is a dog with no collar. Every time we read the book she mentions this (about 30 times) so I realised all I needed to do was make a collar for the dog.

I took the measurements and played about with the design in my head. I could make a tube out of fleece (yes I love fleece) and top-stitch it or I could use cotton fabric and interfacing to keep its shape? How to make the ends neat and what kind of fastening mechanism were also causing me problems. Her favourite colour is purple, I decided to use left over faux leather from covering our dining chairs. I was worried that it would be too thick to sew right sides together and turn but I was not sure about the white underside showing, I then realised I was over thinking the whole thing. I took two strips of the faux leather and sewed it together using a small white top stitch which tied in the white that was showing making it look intentional. I crimped the ends using crimping shears and I added poppers using my Kam popper tool. I cut two circles of felt and hand stitched "Kindle" (the dogs name...) on one circle. I blanket stitched the felt circles together and attached it to a stitch in the collar. It was simple but looked rather effective and I was quite pleased.

I felt a pang of guilt that other children had more complicated and elaborate toys made by me while my little girl had upholstery scraps. My husband was chuffed with it and assured me it would be fine. I got on with the rest of the Christmas preparation and I had just turned the craft room into the spare room when my daughter handed me a bit of paper. I asked what she had drawn and she said "a hippo I thought you could make it one day". I will be honest, I was tempted to get the machine out and sew through the night keeping our visitor awake but it did not seem very festive. On Christmas morning amongst the gifts sent from friends and relatives - she opened the little parcel and gave the biggest grin. She went to show Kindle and they played in the hall together. Admittedly she never actually told me she liked it but she did tell me Kindle loved it. It felt like such a risk at the time but children don't see the time taken or the cost of fabric they just see something they love or something that is forgettable. It was an important lesson in keeping it simple.

Toy dog collar

Unsurprisingly though for her birthday I made her a hippo. I made it using a pattern from Sew Cute to Cuddle by Mariska Vos-Bolman. I adore her designs and I used them for Mollie and the Wedding Tortoise. The diagrams and descriptions as always are really clear. One of the best things is that she shows the finished toy from all angles so you know what all of the parts have to look like.

I chose to make it using purple fleece, obviously! I have now made enough toys to see where I feel the pattern will be challenging. I knew that I would have to be careful with the darts in the body in order to get a good shape and I was a little concerned about inserting the feet as it looked tricky. The darts went in with no problem and the construction was fine. I found that the feet were as tricky as I imagined, sewing one half and then the other is a great tip, as otherwise I would have probably tried to do it as a continuous circle which would have made it more difficult to move the bulk of the fabric around the machine.

To make the hippo you construct the body and the head separately and then put them together, I was really nervous about putting the two together as I had visions of mismatched seams but it actually came together perfectly and I was pleased that the seams lined up. It says in the book that she is a rather large hippo and I would second that, it took a bag and a half of toy stuffing to fill her. I will admit it felt slightly odd to spend my Sunday evening with my hand stuck up a purple hippo's bum. I decided to use fleece eyes and add on small buttons for the pupils. As she gets older my daughter is increasingly fascinated by my button box and certainly has her favourites and she noticed them quite quickly and was excited about them. The hippo has proven to be very popular and is so big that half of the time my daughter uses it as a cushion. It is definitly more loved than the caterpillar I made for her first birthday.

Hippo - design by Mariska Vos- Bolman

Gimmie a M A S C O T

I was trying to think of an idea for my niece's 13th Birthday. I find this a difficult age to make things for. I had made her brother a ninja and her sister a husky so I was eager to go down the "soft toy with a twist" route. When she was little I bought her a fairy rag doll called Mary. At that point I would never have dreamed of sewing things like this for her, but I wanted something reminiscent of Mary, but personal and a bit different, and it needed to be quirky enough for her to like it.

For the past couple of years she has been part of a cheer and dance group based in the Midlands called ACES. She seems to be loving the mix of dance and gymnastics and is having a lot of fun with the group. I remembered seeing a photo of their mascot Molly and started wondering if I could make a mini Mollie. I realised I had a pattern in Sew Cute to Cuddle by Mariska Vos-Bolman (Fluffels) that I could possibly adjust to make it look like Mollie. I loved making the tortoise by Mariska Vos-Bolman  and I was eager to make something out of this book.

                  

                 Mollie the Aces Mascot

Mini Mollie - design modified from "Sew cute to cuddle" 

The pattern to make the doll is really well laid out and explained. The book has full size pattern pages to trace which is helpful and it is beautifully illustrated. As with the Melly and Me toys I used felt as I find it gives a lovely finish and comes in bright solid colours. I changed the dress colours which was easy and then all I needed to do was make the hair bigger and change the facial features. I found the doll easier to put together than the wedding Tortoise. The most complicated bits were as a result of my modifications. By making the bunches much bigger they are far more difficult to fit inside the head to sew it up which resulted in me ladder stitching part of the head closed. The face took quite a lot of time and rearranging as even the slightest change and it all looked 'wrong'. Mollie has very distinctive eyes ( I started to refer to them as "Pacman eyes" by the end of it).  There was a lot of pinning before I was happy enough to sew it, I layered the complicated eyes using felt. I was very pleased with the bows in her hair as they are made in the way that real "cheer bows" are.

Although she looks unusual without the context behind her design I was pleased with the outcome, I think next to Mollie she looks how I was hoping she would. My niece certainly knew who she was when she opened her which I was really happy about. I now have more characters from the book planned including some with more modifications.

Wedding Tortoises

For my friend's wedding I decided to make wedding Tortoises. There has been a long running joke between them about owning a tortoise to the point where a tortoise made it onto the invitations! I therefore decided that it was appropriate to make a pair of tortoises. I love making things for weddings as you get a theme and a colour range set as soon as you get the invitation. Last year I made my sister and her husband wedding mice to match their blue shabby chic theme. I used a pattern from Sewn Toy Tales by  Melly and Me. They were fun and went down really well.

The wedding mice

The pattern for my tortoises came from Mariska Vos-Bolman on her fluffels website. It was marked as an advanced pattern. I really liked the pattern and the expression on the tortoise's face. I had some experience of making soft toys mainly from 'Melly and Me' and my confidence had grown with each toy so I decided to give it a shot even though I would say I was more 'intermediate' than 'advanced'.

The pattern layout was different as you had to add in your own seam allowance. There were a lot of pattern pieces and some very new techniques to learn. By far the most difficult section was the eye as it involved making an eye socket which had to be turned in on itself leaving a good seam. The eye was made separately out of three fabric pieces and a felt pupil. The eye was then stuffed and stitched into the socket. This required precision which is even harder when sewing a circle. Getting the seams correct on the head was also difficult. Apart from these two stages the main difficulty was constructing it to hide all of the seams initially put in on the band and the base.

The fabric was easily chosen as I knew the groom's tartan and the colour of the bridesmaid dresses. I decided to use the same mottled green fabric on both of the tortoise. For the bride tortoise I used the burgundy to match the bridesmaids in the center and ivory satin backed crepe for the side panels. I decorated it using lace and seed pearls to add texture and lift the design. The ivory and peals were left over from my wedding dress which I thought made it more personal. I ordered a sample of the grooms tartan for the grooms tortoise with the co-ordinating colours for the side panels and I liked that it co-ordinated so well with the theme and colours.

Although it took a little bit of getting used to a different style and method I enjoyed the detail in the pattern and the result had a good finish. I feel it is only a matter of time before I own her new book Sew Cute to Cuddle.

The tortoise went down well with the happy couple and the biggest compliment came from the groom himself who did not realise I had made them until he spotted the tartan!

Mr and Mrs Tortoise - pattern by Mariska Vos-Bolman