A couple of instances of design number 1, a squishy rocket ship, have already been deployed to their tiny new owners, hopefully helping to instill their parents' love of sci-fi from the very beginning. As with any space-bound vessel, the first step was to produce some engineering drawings:
This was just to get a rough idea of the size, shape and fabrics I'd be using. After I had that all worked out in my mind, I made pattern pieces on baking paper, which I used to trace the shapes in dressmakers chalk and cut out my fabric:
It's nothing fancy as patterns go, just flat shapes with decorations. I like to use fleece and felt fabrics, because they're huggably soft, really easy to work with, and very forgiving of a few uneven stitches. The red and black "window" pieces go onto one of the grey rocket body pieces first - and what's a window without someone to wave out of it? I found a couple of these adorable iron-on robot patches at the fabric shop:
Here you can see the window and its occupant (I had to do a bit of surgery to make it fit), and some "rivets" stitched in metallic embroidery thread. After joining the rocket body to the exhaust flames, I stitched around the outside using buttonhole stitch, adding in a ribbon for hanging the finished piece:
Buttonhole stitch may not look as professional as a hidden seam, but it's easier to do, and I quite like the homemade, hand-stitched look it gives to the finished pieces.
Then comes the fun part, stuffing! I use a fluffy polyester stuffing, and a chopstick to jam it into the hard-to-reach parts, like the fins on the rocket.
After stitching around the last of the stuffing, here's what this finished product looks like. Something tells me the recipients don't care that much about them yet, but hopefully they'll enjoy the cuddliness when they get a bit older.
My next plan is to make some animal softies for more small humans. Today I found this embossed fleece fabric, which has definitely given me some more softie inspiration!
