Francine chose our project this month and I have to say I was very excited. I have been meaning to make a door stopper for a while now so this was just the push that I needed. The original idea for the Embroidered Animal Doorstop is from the blog Super + Super
This is what I did! Isn't he or she cute!
My Supplies:
8 in diameter plate
Tailor’s chalk
Sturdy Fabric
Rotary Cutter
Pinking shears
Embroidery floss in pink, light blue and dark blue
Sewing machine (optional)
Needle
Epsom salts (or white rice)
Toy stuffing
Pins
1. Fold fabric in half and use plate and chalk to trace a circle onto fabric. Remember that you need two circles - front and back of your kitty. Then trace another circle 5/8 of an inch from the first one. This is I used as my sewing allowance.
2. Cut along outer circle using rotary cutter. You should now have two circles. Using template trace kitty face onto one of your circles. For some reason mine ended up being the mirror image of the original, that is my whiskers are on the opposite sides..oops.
3. Now comes the fun part...embroidery. I used the different colors of thread to embroider my kitty's face on. You can find details on how to do this and the various stitches used on the original here. I also found this video very useful for the couching stitch. I also just used one ply of my light blue floss for the couching thread.
4. Now to sew the two circles together. I placed my two circles on top each other ride sides together and pinned to hold in place. Using my pinking shares and fabric scraps, I cut two pieces in the shape of kitty ears. Position these where you would like.
Then (and this is important...trust me) sandwich the ears between the two circles with short straight edge of the ear in line with the edges of the two circles and the tip pointing towards the center of the circles. Let's just say that I stuffed my kitty and then was like..where the hell are the ears...duh! I had put them on the wrong way!!
Ear between the two circles with the tip pointing inwards.
5. Sew circles together using sewing machine or needle and thread. I used one ply of embroidery floss and did a back stitch to sew mine together. (On the original you can see how they used a sewing machine.) Normally I would have used my machine but I wanted to watch TV so went the manual route. In hindsight I will be using my sewing machine if I ever make this again. Leave an opening between the two ears (that you attached the right way lol) so that you can stuff it.
6.Turn inside out and stuff. I forgot to buy white rice and was not going to use my nice brown rice to fill this but then I remembered that I had a bag of epsom salts and really all you need is some weight for the bottom. So I used epsom salts and then stuffed it with the toy filling.
Sew up the opening between the ears and there you have it. Here is another view of my kitty. Note that I did this over a period of three or four days. So plan accordingly and hopefully you don't have to build in time for silly mistakes like missing ears ...smile!
Now let's go see how Francine made out with this project.
They are so cute! I may or may not have sewn my ears on wrong too. lol Your satin stitch worked out much better than mine. Mine is flipped too, I think we were supposed to flip the template before printing. Or something.
Posted by: Francine from Callaloo Soup | March 27, 2015 at 01:19 PM