Homemade Toys!

It turns out that Santa and Mattel aren't the only ones who can make toys! Yesterday I started to make a stuffed elephant, it took a few turns from what I first imagined but I like what I came out with.

I drew a super basic elephant shape on paper and then traced it out onto a wooly sort of fabric I have. I actually have used the fabric to make myself a scarf so despite looking like scratchy wool it's quite soft.

The doodles are from fiddling with ideas for an elephant tail

I cut out the fabric and embroidered the outline in blue thread, made eyes, cut out ear shapes and sewed them on (with a super tiny stitch) and then pinned the middle strip on and sewed it up. Attaching the middle piece was pretty awkward and I stopped and started the sewing quite a bit.

Another view of the inside out elephant, the red thread is a heart I also embroidered:

One last inside out before I sewed up the other side and flipped it:

A much more rotund elephant, stuffed with...well, stuffing. It kind of looks like its ears are corduroy, but it's just the wrong side of the grey fabric, I was hoping it would add some contrast, it worked:

I added a tail, despite my initial drawing (I tried embroidering something a few times but it didn't look right) I went with the same idea as the ears  - fabric on the wrong side sewn on. It doesn't look quite like a tail but hopefully it's passable:

Depending on what other friends/family member have kids there might be other animals created in the future. Or maybe just when I get bored, so that could mean more animals shortly.