Chelsea's favourite show is 'In The Night Garden'. She has loved this show since before she was 1. Her best friend in the world is her 'Upsy Daisy' doll - which is a character of the show. She once lost her Upsy doll, what an ordeal. You can read about that story on my other blog
here.
Anyways, Chelsea is turning 2 soon. Her actual birthday is at the start of February but because Nick is heading away to the Army for 3 months on Monday, we have brought her birthday forward to this weekend. She won't even know, she'll just be excited about cake and presents.
Since I wanted to make her at least one gift for her birthday, I decided to make her a Haahoo (other characters from the show). As you can see from the pic above, there are 5 of them. I made the first one for her.
Here is how it turned out....
Here is a quick tutorial for anyone out there who has an 'In the night garden' obsessed child like me.
What you will need:
- Fabric. I got mine from spotlight and it's called 'Rainbow Dots' by Sugar and Spice.
- Toy fill/stuffing
- Felt for the eyes and mouth (or you could use fabric)
- Pins and a needle
- Sewing Machine, thread etc - your usual sewing stuff
-
This Template (Body, eyes and mouth). I enlarged it, printed it out over 4 pages, taped it together then cut it out.
What I did:
1. Cut out 2 main body pieces using the template, 1 front and 1 back. Then I cut out the eyes and a mouth using felt. I cut out 2 black eyes, 2 white eyes slightly smaller to give black frame and then 2 pupils. If you wanted to, you could just cut out 2 white eyes and 2 pupils and stitch around the white with black thread. Up to you!
2. (Optional) As a personal touch, I wanted to add some embroidery on the back. We call Chelsea "Chel Belle" most of the time so I embroidered that onto matching fabric.
I cut around the words in a heart shape and then stuck it on the 'back' body piece and did an applique stitch around it.
3. I then moved to the 'Front' body piece and attached the eyes and mouth. I did an applique stitch around those as well. I use this stitch because it keeps the edges secured down.
4. With the main body pieces complete, I placed them together (right sides facing) and sewed around the outside. I used a 1/4" seam allowance and made sure I left a gap open to turn and stuff.
5. I then turned in the right way and ironed all the seams flat.
6. Once ironed, I opened the gap and stuffed it full of toy stuffing. Once stuffed, I hand stitched up the opening with invisible thread.
There you have it. One Haahoo. I am sure Chelsea is going to love it. She found a picture I printed for the template and carried it around for the day. Can't wait to see her face when she opens it.
This is my first ever tutorial so if there are some things that don't make sense, please let me know :)
Hope you have all had a lovely day, we went to the beach again which was nice. Thank you for reading!!