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.
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!!