If you have gotten through most of the Christmas crafts, you may be looking for something different to try. Why not have a go at soft toys? They are a popular thing to craft. They can be simple and quick or more elaborate and take a fair while to create. When starting off it is better to begin with, something relatively easy, and then work your way up to some of the more elaborate patterns. In fact, you can create a simple toy following the instructions below. Read on to find out more.
Safety
Safety is a number one issue when creating toys because they are often given to children to play with. Look up the Code of Federal Practice guidelines to help you with this or be sure to state that the item is for decorative purposes only, and not to be played with.
Materials
You will need two orange 10” squares of fabric. This can be cotton, toweling, felt or even fake fur. You will need on 10” of piece white fabric, and a 10’ piece of black fabric. You will also need some black embroidery thread. Be careful though as fake sure is pretty difficult to work with and it gets everywhere!
You will also need thread, fabric glue, and scissors. As well as a sewing machine like the ones reviewed at sewingmachinejudge.com/kenmore-ultra-mini-sewing-machine. Using a machine rather than hand sewing makes any project like this way faster and easier.
In addition to that material, you will need some cotton or polyester stuffing for the inside of the toy.
Basic shape
Using a simple shape and creating the details with additional pieces of fabric is a great way of keeping your project doable.
The first thing to do is to cut out the shape for the main body from the orange fabrics squares, making sure that both overalls match up. You can make this complicated and detailed or go for something super simple like an oval.
Then turn them inside out and use your sewing machine with a white, orange or invisible thread to sew up around the sides. Leave a small gap where you can add the stuffing.
Then turn the oval inside out, so the right side of the fabric is showing. You can then stuff the soft toy with filling.
Once this has been done, carefully sew up the remaining hole on the outer edge as neatly as possible. Now you have created your basic shape. Remember you can use this for a lot of different animals, not just a fox.
Adding Details
The next job is to start adding the details, so your oval looks more like a fox. Use The white fabric to add a stomach shape. Or cut out small triangles for the ears in white like the one at stitchedbycrystal.com/2014/01/free-stuffed-fox-pattern. Then fix them near the top of the oval. You can add smaller triangles in black to give them some dimension.
As you are making a Fox, you can also add the puff of a white tail on the back, and larger white shape for the face. Fix these on either with fabric glue or hand stitching.
Then cut out some black circles for the eyes and attached them onto in the face triangles. You can add a smaller white dot of fabric, or embroidery thread to give it a cartoon like appearance.
After that choose to add accessories if you want. Like a little-knitted scarf or a cute hat. The choice is yours.
