Petra the Hedgehog

I just finished this adorable little hedgehog stuffie. In high school I had a pet hedgehog named Petra, so I named this little gal Petra II in honor of the original.

Here are a few things you should know about having a hedgehog (real) as a pet:
1. They snort when they are happy
2. They leave quills everywhere, which you will step on in bare feet
3. They have incredibly soft tummies
4. You have to clip their toenails, which is an interesting experience



Here are a few things you should know about having a hedgehog (stuffie) as a pet:
1. They snort when they are happy, if you make the snorting sound for them
2. Their quills are soft and permanently attached to their bodies
3. They have incredibly soft tummies
4. You will never have to clip their toenails, because they don't even have feet



You can get the tutorial to make your own hedgehog here, at matsutake. I did use felt, which simplified things a lot (no hemming). I'm working on some colorful ones now!

P.S. I don't know if I'll be able to bring myself to give this one away in a toy drop. I'm feeling pretty attached at the moment...

Personalized Bathmat

I just put the finishing touches on my new bathmat, which has taken me much longer than I expected it to. I got the idea from the tutorial at Montessori by Hand, and I only added a few variations along the way. However, I decided to document the process by taking photos along the way. So... this really isn't a tutorial, it's just a photo essay of this project!

To start, I had fun, fun, fun picking out fabrics at Pacific Fabrics. They've had a display of aqua and spring-green fabrics that I've been eyeing for awhile, and then I added in a little pink to add pop. The two polka-dot fabrics are left over from sewing Ellie, and the white fabric with the blue flowers was left over from a pair of pajama pants I made.

Next, I made a 2.5" square template out of cardstock (well, actually an old Lean Cuisine box), and used it to trace and cut billions and billions of squares out of my fabrics. Actually, I cut enough to make a 13 x 9 array. The tutorial I was using called for an 11 x 8 array, but my husband and I both have huge feet (more on that later), so I knew we'd need a larger mat.

Right after I finished this step, I went out and bought myself a rotary cutter. My hand was killing me after cutting all those squares with scissors.

Next, I laid out all of my squares the way I wanted them.

In the tutorial on Montessori by Hand, she warns you not to lay your squares out in a place where your cat might want to hang out. That was sound advice - I should have taken it.

Once the squares are just right, pick them up one row at a time, in order, and take them to your sewing machine. Stitch the rows together in strips, with a 1/4" seam allowance. After each strip is stitched, be sure to return it to the array so that you don't forget how you laid things out.

After I stitched each row, I ironed the seams down so that everything would lay flat. The tutorial said to iron the seams to one side, and again, that was sound advice. I thought that ironing them flat would make things look neater, but actually it just made it harder to sew over the seams. Things ended up looking pretty lumpy and gnarly:

About halfway through I wised up and started ironing the seams to one side, and it looked much better:

Once the quilting step was done, I started embroidering two pairs of footprints on the bathmat. I wanted mine and my husbands, side by side. Here's where I needed a larger bathmat. My feet are size 11, and my husband's are 15, so adding the extra rows and columns made sure that everything fit.

I used an air erasable pen to trace our feet, then got to stitching. I like the subtlety of the white thread.

The front was now all finished - time for the back. I bought a nice white towel at Goodwill for $1.99 - my first adventure in repurposing fabrics.

I cut off the edges of the towel, as well as those little stripes on each end. That made everything lay flatter. My fancy new rotary cutter came in really handy for this step, as did my gridded self-healing mat!

I laid the top facedown on the flat towel piece, pinned, and stitched all the way around with about a 3/8" seam allowance, leaving a gap for turning.

Then I trimmed the towel down to match the front.

Last, I turned the whole thing right-side out and top-stitched all the way around to make everything look finished. I didn't stitch around the footprints as recommended in the tutorial, because it looked hard. :)

Here's the final product!

A few lessons I learned along the way:

-Rotary cutters rock.

-Air erasable pens are nice, but mine started to disappear really fast, so I had to work quickly.

-Feet look weird, especially toes.

-Quilters are the most patient people in the world!

Toy Drop #2

This afternoon I dropped my second toy for Toy Society, my hermaphroditic* Potato Head doll. I left it at Maple Leaf Park again, because I know there are always so many young kids there, and I was worried that if it stayed out too long it would start to rain.

People have asked me why I'm doing the Toy Society drops - they wonder if it's charity. The answer is no, not really. I mean, maybe if I was giving free toys to kids in a needy area it would be, but Maple Leaf is pretty middle-class. The truth is that I just always see toys I want to try making, but having no kids of my own, it always seemed kind of pointless before. I guess I could make toys and then give them to Goodwill, but this is just a little more fun.

I know that other Toy Society droppers have been dropping by my blog (ha! get it?), so I wonder... other Toy Societiers, why do you drop?

*It's a hermaphrodite because it has both guy and gal parts. Sidenote: I couldn't remember that word, so I asked my husband. His answer? "Um... androgenous? Ambidextrous? Amphibian?" Sigh...

What I'm Working On...

I have a feeling that I won't be posting many finished projects this week, because I'm working on one that is beyond time-consuming. Here is a little hint. I'll post more pictures (and maybe even my first tutorial!) soon.

Potato Head

Here's the toy for my second toy drop. I got the idea from Make It and Love It, and just love the way it turned out (hmm... I guess I made it and love it).

It was a relatively quick project - the little pieces required a lot of patience because my sewing machine skills aren't quite there yet, but I really like the way things turned out. Plus, I got to use up a lot of my scrips and scraps of felt that I had left over from other projects.

The idea is that Mr. Potato Head can provide hours of entertainment, but the plastic pieces are bulky and noisy, so this is a softer, gentler, quieter alternative for those times when parents need a silent activity for the kiddos.

I'll drop this toy as soon as it stops raining, and post the pictures.


^The lovely lady in her Sunday best.


^Excited after a trip to the dentist!

^I call this look, "Randy the pawnbroker."

^Like all true divas, your potato friend comes with plenty of accessories.

^ When ol' Potato Head is done for the day, everything tucks into this pocket on the back.

Checkbook Cover

This was a quick project I threw together in a few minutes. The measurements and inspiration came from Prudent Baby, but I used double-sided fusible lightweight interfacing to make mine a little stiffer. I had never used interfacing before, so it was a fun challenge to figure out how to make it work.

Basically, I followed the instructions on Prudent Baby exactly, except that before I sewed I ironed the outside fabric piece (the big owl piece) to a piece of interfacing that I cut just a little bit smaller. Then I sewed everything together as described and turned the whole thing inside out (which was tricky with the stiff interfacing), then ironed again to fuse the interfacing to the yellow inside fabric. Finally, I folded the checkbook cover and ironed it again to give it a nice deep fold.

Unfortunately, just after finishing this project I realized that I was out of checks. Oh well, my new checks will be here in the next few days, so I'll get to try this out then!

Toy Drop

This morning I dropped Ellie at a park near my house where I thought there would be no shortage of families with kids to find her. It was pretty exciting - I felt very stealthy but also like I was doing a good deed for the day. As I was leaving the park a family with a toddler was coming in, and as I pulled away in my car I could see them stop to inspect my drop. I don't know whether they left with Ellie or not, but I'm hopeful!

Update: Here's my drop on the toysociety site.