Tuesday 14 May 2019

(Fairly) Simple Soft Toys

Yesterday I sat down at my sewing machine to get on with some projects that are long overdue. Time to finish them and get all the bits put away! However, with a two and a four year old hanging over my arms and asking how they could help, my long-overdue projects became more overdue, and we came up with something much more fun we could do together. We made soft toys!

Here's how we did it.

You need:
Paper
Pencils or similar
Paper scissors
Main fabric
Ear fabric (same or different)
Tailors chalk or something to draw on your fabric
Fabric scissors
Sewing pins
Sewing machine
Sewing threads
Sharp pointed scissors - ie embroidery scissors.
(In our case - Ribbon or cord for tails)
Soft toy stuffing
Hand sewing needle
(In our case - Buttons or embroidery thread for eyes and decoration)



  1. Give each kid a piece of paper a little bigger than the size you want your toys to be and something to draw on it with. 
    • Mine got an A4 sheet each.
  2. Let them draw the shape they want, or help them draw a simplified version of the animal you they want to make. 
    • I tried to steer my kids towards basic shapes or the first letters in their names*1, but Master 4 announced he wanted a rhinoceros. Master 2 was leaning towards a rabbit, but after my ghastly efforts at drawing a rabbit shape, I persuaded him that an elephant would be ok. I drew very rounded shapes, as few sharp corners or curves as possible. Back legs are one big clump, another for the front legs. (If they don't want recognisable animals, you could easily make these into any random shape they have drawn. But see note *1 below.)
  3. Cut out the shape from the paper to make a pattern. 
    • My four year old did this. The two year old who wanted to help but started cutting straight through the middle of his elephant was given some of the scraps from the outside to cut up.
  4. Draw an ear template for each animal, or the pattern for any extra bits you want to sew on. 
    • The elephant ears were relatively simple. We googled rhinoceros pictures to see what the ears and tails looked like, and it took a bit more guessing to find what their ears would look like opened out flat. We landed on something like a teardrop with a flattened bottom. 
  5. Cut out these pattern pieces.
  6. Fold your fabric right sides together. Trace one of the main shape on the main fabric - so you have two, one facing up, one facing down. Trace two of the ear shape on the ear fabric - so you have four, two facing up and two facing down.
  7. Cut around the shapes in the fabric, adding seam allowance. 
    • This means you decide how much fabric you want left over outside your seams (this will all be tucked inside the animal when it's finished.) If you are a good sewer - pick your preferred seam allowance. If you are not so experienced, don't cut too close to the pattern template. I suggest 1 1/2 or 2 cms. Cut this far from the line you have drawn on the fabric (outside - making the shape that much bigger).
  8. You should now have two main body pieces and 4 ear pieces for each toy.
  9. Take the ear pieces, and pin the front to the back of each ear, right sides together, to hold them still. Sew around all the parts that will not be connected to the main body (leaving just a small enough hole to turn it all inside-out). 
    • Your sewing line is the line that marked exactly where your template piece sat. For our elephant, this was all around the top, back and bottom of the ear, not the front. For the rhino, we sewed from the bottom, up the side to the tip, and down the other side back to the bottom, but not across the bottom.
    • (My kids sat on my knee for a bit of the sewing. They got good at lifting and lowering the presser foot, removing the pins and putting them back in the pin cushion, and pulling out the pieces after each finished seam and snipping the threads. We're not up to them guiding fabric through the machine yet, especially not something this fiddly).
  10. Take some sharp pointed scissors and carefully clip slits in the seam allowance from the edge of the fabric to just before the seam. You need slits around any curves and any corners. 
    • Anywhere you have a curve or corner with more fabric outside the seam than inside, it is a good idea to clip away some small triangles, so that there isn't so much fabric that needs to be pushed inside the curve or corner when you turn it all inside out. Anywhere there is a curve with more fabric inside the item and less fabric in the seam allowance, you need to cut some slits in the seam allowance, otherwise it will hold back the shape from turning through to the right shape when you turn it right side out. (My kids wanted to help with this, but I judged the risk that they would snip the stitching was too high...)
  11. Turn your ears right sides out. Make sure you push the points and curves out as far as you can. Tuck the seam allowance for the open edge inside, and pin them to hold the seam allowances in.  Make sure the two sides are even. 
    • In the case of our rhino ears, we folded the seam allowances in, and then folded the bottoms in half and pinned.
  12. Take your main pieces, and open them out so you are looking at the right sides. With the help of your pattern pieces (to show the true shape you will be sewing - it can be hard to see when the seam allowance is also visible), decide where your ears should sit.  Pin the ears in the right place, one on each piece, trying to get them in the same place on each side.
  13. Using a small zigzag stitch, sew back and forth across the edge of each ear, the edge you left open. Sew straight through the ear and the main piece of the animal.
  14. Remove the pins you had holding the ear to the main piece. Now look at where your ear is sitting. If there is anywhere it crosses over (or gets too close to) the sewing line - the line you drew on your fabric around the pattern piece, you need to fold it down so that it is not over that line. All of the ear needs to (temporarily) sit inside the main animal body. Pin it so it stays folded down.
  15. If you want a tail on your animal, pin it in now. It is a bit counter intuitive, but you need to pin you tail so that the part you DON'T want to see sits OUTSIDE the animal (ie - the seam allowance of the tail in the seam allowance of the animal), and the part you DO want to see INSIDE the animal (the "good bit" of the tail on the "good bit" of the body). It will look a bit backwards for now.
  16. Place the two sides of the animal right sides together. Line them up carefully and pin all around the sewing line.
  17. Decide where you want to leave a hole for stuffing
    •  (that you will hand sew later. I recommend somewhere discreet*2 and on a straight line, not a curve. We used the bottom of the back foot). 
  18. Sew all around the main shape, but not over the stuffing hole. Backstitch over the tail to make sure it is well attached. Backstitch on both sides of the stuffing hole to fasten the seam well.
  19. Turn the whole thing right-side-out. Careful if you have pins holding in your ears. Remove any pins holding your ears down.
  20. Stuff it! Start furthest in, making sure the parts furthest from your stuffing hole are stuffed firmly before you work your way back towards the stuffing hole. You will need way more stuffing that you think you do, if you want it at all firm.
  21. When the whole animal/toy has been stuffed, hand sew closed the stuffing hole. Jiggle the stuffing around a bit to get some down by the seam you just sewed closed. 
  22. Add any further decorations you would like. 
    • We sewed buttons for eyes, and one decorative button more for each animal. I used upholstery thread for the buttons, and each button is sewn three times, using three separate threads that are tied well. So if one thread breaks, the others should hold. And my kids have been well warned that if they ever put the buttons in their mouths, I'll cut them off and they'll have to have embroidered eyes. I recommend embroidery, not buttons, for any child who puts things in their mouths. 
  23. Enjoy!

*1  Note that it is really hard to make shapes with holes in the middle. Much harder than this simple project. If you want to make something like an "A", I suggest making it without the hole in the middle, and then sewing a small dimple where the hole should be, pulling front and back together. You could put a button in the dimple if you wanted.

*2 I learned something today. Discreet is not a misspelling or americanism of discrete [blush]. Discreet means careful and circumspect" or "intentionally unobtrusive". Discrete means "separate, as in 'a finite number of discrete categories' ". So there you go.