Weekend Project

Well, I think it's official.  I've become totally inspired lately by the Make It And Love It blog.  A few months ago I saw this idea on her blog.  I read through the entire tutorial she had and knew I wanted to make something similar in the near future.
Recently, I heard about a little girl from church who was sick and even spent some time in the hospital recovering.  She's just a few months older than my little guy, so I knew there were probably only so many coloring books and TV shows that would occupy her as her little body recovered.  I wanted to do something for her that would bring a smile to her face, and maybe even occupy her time for more than a few minutes.  (If that's possible for a two year old.)  My mind turned to this idea, and I decided to spend some time making a little felt potato for her this weekend. 

Isn't he cute just hanging out in my windowsill, soaking in the natural light?

To start, I had to make my own patterns.  But I just sketched them out by hand on regular paper.  Nothing too technical.  A few pieces I folded in half to get them to be equal proportions, but I tried not to be too picky.  Then I cut out the pieces in felt--a front and back for each piece.  (The pieces are layered together in this picture.)

Then I placed the velcro where I wanted the face pieces to be on the body, and then sewed them in place.  Then I sewed a pocket to the back piece to hold all the extra pieces.

I then sewed the opposing pieces of velcro to one side of each face piece.

Then I took the two pieces of of each face piece and sewed them together (with wrong sides facing), left a gap for stuffing (poly fill), stuffed,  and then finished sewing them closed.  (All on the machine, of course.  Cause no one want to sew all that by hand!)
For the body, I followed a suggestion I found online from someone else who used this idea, and sewed the body with right sides together.  Then I turned it, stuffed it, and sewed up the bottom.  The intent was to prevent it from puckering too much around the edges.  I did it this way, but I'm not sure if I'd do it that way again.  It was really hard to not get a flat bottom doing it this way.  And we all know potatoes are round!
One nice thing about this project was using felt.  Felt is great because you don't have to worry about the fabric fraying.  That's why I could sew the pieces with the wrong sides together and expose the seams.  

On these two pieces I sewed some detail seams.  Teeth and lip lines.  The teeth lines don't show up very well in the picture, but you can see them pretty well in the photo at the top.

Then I warmed up my trusty hot glue gun and added some accent pieces from some scrap felt.  I used some photos online as a guide and then cut them by hand. 

Here's all the finished pieces.

Here's the Mr version.

And the Mrs version

And then the extra pieces can tuck inside the pocket.  Although in the future, I think I'll do the pocket differently too.

I will admit that this project was a little more than I had bargained for.  It wasn't really difficult exactly.  It just took me a bit longer than I had imagined.  The truth is, it took me a total of about 5 hours to complete.  And half of that time was interruption free because I worked on it after the kids were asleep.  Shawn thought it was great and admitted it would have taken him much longer to finish.  But he still told me, "That's five hours you'll never get back."  Some boys just don't get crafting, huh?  I realize there may be some of you reading this that are thinking the same thing, but don't worry.  I don't feel like my time was spent in vain.  I enjoyed the creative process and making something with my hands.  And the bonus will be seeing the smile on the face of a little girl who will enjoy it.
Share the love little potato guy!