Tag Archives: monster toy

Quick Update: Weekend Projects

We arrived back from vacation with an action packed weekend planned.

Firstly, I am ecstatic about my first sale on Etsy. I finished making a custom order for chair bags (for 11 in. wide kids chairs).
  

The first picture is the actual color swatch which shows the true color, the second picture is the finished bag but the photo was taken in the evening light.

The other big project this weekend is the backyard – we are having a “working bee”, where friends come over and help us out with manual labor in exchange for food and drinks. The two walled levels are being put into the backyard as designed in the previous post. This weekend we should have the following update done to that post (cross fingers 🙂 ):

Additional steps over the next few weekends:

  • Order and get the wood (DONE)
  • Order and get the sand, gravel and dirt (DONE – except for the gravel)
  • Lay out the step walls  (DONE)
  • Put in french drains behind each step  (DONE)
  • Fill in with soil  (DONE)
  • Order and install concrete step tops
  • Order and get sod
  • Add the additional vegetable garden  (DONE)
  • Place the boarders for the vegetable garden path
  • Fill with stones

I will post photo’s on Monday on the progress of our back yard :-).

My projects, over the weekend is to try to make progress on the:

  1. Four Season’s Quilt
  2. Place mats
  3. New Monster Designs

Monsters: Stuffed Toys

As mentioned previously my son and I make monster birthday cards together. This weekend we decided to take that one step further.

Based on monster drawings made by my son, I transformed one of those pictures into a stuffed monster toy. Some of the things my son designed/choose includes the 3 fingers, all his drawings at present have 3 fingers, his favorite color is orange, and he chose the buttons for the eyes.

Here is our first monster.

  

It was very cute – he slept on it as a cushion the first night and then he carried it in the car to track out camp – he is very proud of his monster 🙂

Some of the materials and steps I used to make these:

  1. I drew free hand the shape of the body onto scrap-book card, from that original shape I got out a stomach shape….this way ensuring that it fits in the main body. I pinned the body shape onto dark blue corduroy, and on orange kona cotton for the back body and cut out the two shapes together.
  2. The other two templates I used, were one for the legs and one for the arms. I pinned the leg and arm templates to patterned fabric which I folded into quarters so when I cut the shapes I would have 4 pieces (2 pieces in each direction).
  3. I cut the mouth free-hand using the stomach fabric as a guide out of the same dark blue corduroy.
  4. I cut the teeth out of white felt, using the opposing triangles so they can be top and bottom teeth.
  5. I sewed the hands and feet inside out using a 1/4 inch seam. I then turned them in the right way, stuffed them with stuffing. I sewed the top of each limb close leaving about 1/4 inch so that I had room to sew the limb into the body.
  6. The pieces for the body – the stomach, and the mouth I used zig-zag stitch to attach them, and the teeth I just used a normal walking stitch. I sewed on the buttons.
  7. I cut a piece of straight 2 inch blue stripped cotton fabric – this is used for the width of the monster and joins the front and back together.
  8. I pinned the front and middle edging together, with the arms and legs placed between the front and middle piece. The fabric was pinned together in reverse. I sewed a 1/4 inch seam. I ironed the seams.
  9. Now for the back piece, I put all the limbs in the middle of the body, I pinned the back to the unsewn middle edge, so everything was inside out. I sewed a 1/4 inch seam leaving about 2-3 inches on the bottom open.
  10. From the opening, I turned everything in the right way, and started stuffing the body. I hand stitched the opening closed to finish the monster.