A pod of cuties

I've got little kids - Lucy, who's 3 (sorry sorry, nearly 4.....), and Cam who's 6 but is a huge softie and just loves his cuddlies, so I got busy on the internet, and looked for some cool but really simple soft toy patterns.

I come across this one

here - unfortunately, the instructions aren't in English... but the photo's are fab, and it was relatively easy to make a pattern for myself.

 I free handed a couple of attempts on a newspaper, I wanted to make mine out of jeans too - I'm in a real jean destroying phase, so I used the width of a pants leg as my size guide - that way I was cutting both sides out at once. This is why my whales are more stream lined than the originals. Man I'm clever. 

After that I carefully pinned my pattern and cut around them. This was where the tricks for young players came in - His belly has to be in reverse, so you get the dark back, light belly thing.

This was probably the trickiest bit - making little grooves for the underside of his chin. Whale Mk1 caused a lot of swearing with his chin grooves, but I wised up with subsequent whales, and pinned the grooves to hold them in place while they were stitched.

I love how baby toys have a crinkly noise making thing in some of them. I assume when you buy a baby toy from the shops it's some sort of heavy duty cellophane, but in the spirit of recycled fabu I used the wrapper off a new roll of tin foil. It wasn't exactly the sound I wanted, but it stiffened up the flippers and tail nicely, and still make a pretty cool sound for a home made toy.

Once he was all stitched together, I pulled apart and old pillow which had lost its shape in the washing machine to reuse the stuffing inside.

Tada! Fist whale done! I wasn't 100% happy with his tail, so I rejigged my newspaper pattern and tried again.

Tada! Whale Mk 2. His tail was much better, and this became my final pattern.

Happy customer! Best. Mother.Ever.

I spoilt myself and bought some new sewing scissors, and holy sweet baby Jesus do they make it much easier to cut. They weren't overly dear either - $14 from K Mart, but they have made the cutting out so much less stressful. Highly recommend good scissors if you wanna be recycled fabu like me.

Drunk on my own success, I decided to make a whale to give away. I made this fella out of velvet and some embossed cotton which was given to me by a friend when I told her what I wanted to do, and was discussing what sort of textures you'd want for a baby toy- he's going to be given to my friends little girl for her first birthday on Friday. I of course decided the second he was finished that he probably should have been pink on top, dark underneath but of well... next time. I can see I'm just gonna fill my house up with Whales.

I'm pretty proud of how these fellas have turned out. Not exactly 'fashion', but totally recycled, and totally made by me.