Family soft toys for Nina

When we arrived in NZ, we were welcomed by friend’s of friends. They were so sweet, they welcomed us in their home for a couple of weeks and we stayed home-sitting their place during Christmas while they were away visiting family. We just had to take care of their (fat) cat. It helped us a great deal, so I wanted to created a little thank you gift.

Mum just sent me some of my embroidery floss and I had the idea to portray the family. I’m not so good at drawing but I wanted the little characters to look like the real ones. I transferred my drawing to a calico piece and chose a blue/green colour palette to coordinate everyone’s attire.

I sew around each character to create a small pocket and added some polyester fill in each family member. I love the 3D effect it gave.

Here is the entire family:

Of course, I had to create their house. The house actually works as a small pouch where the family can hide. The little pouch is quilted with simple straight lines to mimic the wooden panels.

I really enjoyed making this gift and it gave me so many ideas to create more soft toys.

Soft toys

I enjoy making quilts of course, but I also like playing with fabric to create little soft toys. I particularly like making them for baby gifts. Let me share two of my recent projects: a patchwork boat for a little boy and an embroidery portrait for a little girl:I didn’t use a specific pattern for the boat, just making it up as I went. For the little girl, I copied an existing embroidery. Unfortunately, I didn’t keep the source, if you recognise it, let me know and I will add it.

I think I like them equally, I find them very cute. I also embroidered the baby’s name on the back of each soft toys. Shame I don’t have more pictures. I quickly snap a picture just before going to the post office to send them away. While making them, I had so many more ideas and I can’t wait to do more and more.

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