Lady Bug

Two weeks ago I made a tiger for Sophie. Which both girls simply love. I do have some other fuzzy fleecy stuff to make a dog or some similar fuzzy animal for Rachel, but that fuzzy fur stuff is hard to work with so I've been somewhat less than inspired to actually get working on it.

In the mean time, I thought I'd make Rachel something else. Something smaller. So I made a lady bug. (Sorry in advance for the lack of photos of the lady bug in relation to something else so you can see just how small he is, my bad. Maybe next post.)

There are some really cool things about this little guy. I used the same base pattern as I did for the tiger - the Raccoon Tutorial from ikatbag (swoon!), but I printed it smaller. I don't have a way of resizing pdfs any other way it turns out, so I just printed it as A6 size and hoped it would work out. Never before have I been so thankful that there are no seam allowances on a pattern. It really made resizing much easier.

But while I was printing and thinking about how I was going to sew this little guy, I had a think about some other things I would change - not just the size. So I added moveable wings! Honestly, I couldn't be more excited about how it turned out. I'm stoked that what I wanted to happen in my mind actually happened in reality as well. I a little bit wish I had resized the actual wing pieces (rather than just duplicate the body template) so that they would have met in the middle there a bit smoother, but that's ok.

I even sewed little hooks into the seams (nearly invisible!) so that you can hook the wings down while he's resting. Not sure they will get used heaps, but I like the feature. It was really hard to actually photograph those hooks, because they are firstly in the seems and then secondly black like the felt around them, but trust me - they are there.

I debated for a long time about eyes for him. I don't know that I've ever really seen eyes on a lady bug, so it seemed a bit wrong to put them on, even after I googled for it. But then, when I went to Spotlight, they had no shiny black safety eyes that were small enough so that sealed the deal.

The last thing I have to say about this guy is that I hand stitched every last stitch on him. Since I was making him small, I figured he'd be a good project to work on by hand and that I could take him out and work on him while I did other things. I actually got most of him done last night at a church training event. So good to have busy hands as well as a busy mind.

And then to have a fun finished product at the end of another hour or two - even better!