Since Christmas, I must admit that I have really struggled to get my sewing mojo back! I seem to be quite good at starting various projects and then piling them up into my sewing basket! It took my daughter coming down with chicken pox to finally get it back!
To keep her mind off the itchy spots we decided that a stuffed penguin would be our morning project (she is crazy about penguins at the moment!).
After going through my stash, we decided to use some of the black rib
knit. It is lovely and soft and has a good amount of stretch for stuffing! The
rest of it was little scraps of felt, buttons and a piece of white fur trim
(left over from the Christmas stockings!)
The outline
of the penguin was very basic. We drew an egg shape covering the size of a
piece of A4 paper. The white part was more of a bean shape and the eyes, beak,
wings and feet were also very basic shapes (as you can see from the diagram). We used these templates to cut out two of everything (apart from the beak and
white fur tummy). I also added on a 1.5cm seam allowance.
We started by
sewing the fur straight on top of the front of the body.
We then hand
stitched the felt eyes, buttons and beak.
We then sewed
around the front and back of the penguin (right sides together) leaving a 10cm gap
at the bottom for stuffing. We used an old cushion and pulled the stuffing out
of that!
Once it was
stuffed enough, we stitched up the gap.
We then
stitched around the wings (right sides together) and left the top ends (to be
joined on to the body) open. We then folded the openings in and sewed them
straight onto each side of the penguin.
As the feet
were cut out of felt, we hand stitched them straight on to the base of the
penguin.
A very quick
and basic toy penguin but my daughter loves it!
I’m sure that
this shape could work with other favourite animals (especially birds) too!
Our next
project was a summer dress and my daughter had already spied the fabric she
liked! It may be February but we are already dreaming about the sunshine! We
used the free pattern for the girls’ long dress from ‘Prima Magazine’ (March
2017).
This pattern
is very straight forward and lends itself beautifully to cotton jersey! My
daughter decided to use both our blue and
turquoise pineapples.
I haven’t
created a step by step guide as the pattern explains itself so well. However, here
are a few tips for using a cotton jersey.
Apart from when gathering the skirt
layers, use a small zig zag stitch (with a stretch needle throughout).
The pattern mentions using a bias
binding strip under the arms (the dress has small capped sleeves) but I found
that the armhole folded in nicely without. The beauty of using cotton jersey is
that it doesn’t fray so you don’t really need the bias binding edge.
When I joined the skirt layers, I
used a straight stitch and a zig zag stitch over the top (just to make it a bit
stronger).
The dress pattern also includes a zip
opening in the back of the bodice. I decided to replace this with 3 poppers.
This was mainly because I didn’t have the correct colour zip to hand and we
needed to be finished quickly!
The poppers work perfectly and I will probably do the same if I make
another one.
All done... one happy (and distracted from itching) daughter!
My daughter has chosen her favourite fabric combinations for contrast. Mix prints are very in at the moment, so this variation on mixing obviously shows her potential as a future fashion guru!
For more ideas, patterns and tutorials, follow Girl Charlee's board on Pinterest.
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Happy Sewing!
~ Jen & The Girl Charlee Team
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