Sewing Tuesday: Crazy doodle monster.

Here's my crazy doodle monster. I designed him by doodling lots of different monsters then choosing my favourite to sew up in to a toy. Want to have a go? OK!

Start by drawing the basic doodle monster shape lots of times on a piece of paper. You can see in my picture below all of the different monsters have the same body shape. Try drawing different spikes, eyes, feet and mouth shapes on your monster body shapes.

I chose the doodle monster with the red spikes, huge feet and blue eyes to make up in to a toy. Your doodle monster can look just like mine if you want or it can be different, it's up to you. Keep the same basic body shape unless you're really confident though as that's the shape I'll be using in the tutorial.

You will need:

Choose which of your doodle monsters you like the best and draw stars around him so that you can find him easily on the page!

• Felt in your doodle monster colours.
• Buttons for eyes.
• Thread in colours to match your felt.
• Some toy stuffing or cotton wool balls.
• Scissors.
• Pencil and paper.
• Needle and pins.

Step 1.
Fold a piece of paper in half and draw the basic monster body shape up against the fold like this:

Draw your spikes on to the body shape. Remember they might be different to mine so check your doodle monster drawing.

Cut out the body shape and the spikes, here's what you should have when you open them up:

As we cut the body shape out on the fold of the paper you might end up with too many spikes. Fold your basic monster body shape back in half and arrange the spikes how you want them. My monster has spikes down his back and tail so I snipped them next to the top of his head like in the picture below.

Pin your paper pieces on to your felt. My monster has a grey body and red spikes. Draw around the paper  body piece with a pencil then cut it out. For the spikes, draw around the curved part a bit bigger than the paper to make sewing easier. 

Here's what you should have:

Step 2.

Fold the body piece in half and sandwich the spikes in between. Pin the spikes so they don't move around while you are sewing.

Sew with over stitch like in the picture below, going through the spikes. Use thread that matches your body felt. I'm only using red thread so that you can see where I'm sewing. Check the GETTING STARTED link at the top right of the page if you're not sure how to sew.

Go all the way around sewing up the tail until you get to the bottom of the monster's body.

The picture below shows where to stop sewing. Sew a few stitches on top of each other and tie a good knot when you finish off as stuffing can put strain on your stitches.

Start stuffing with small bits of fluffy stuff, whatever you have, poking it in with a pencil.

Poke some in to the tail too.

Step 3.

My monster has a squashy cheeky face. To make it look like that I sewed the tip of his nose to his chest. You don't have to do this bit if your monster doesn't have a squashy cheeky face like mine. 

Here's how I did it if you want to try it.

I snipped my spikes down to the monster's body so that I could fold his nose down to his chest easily.

I went up through his body with the needle to hide the knot on the end of my thread, coming out where I wanted his nose to get pulled down to. I went through the end of his nose with my needle and pulled the thread tight.

I sewed a few stitches there at the end of his nose to secure it. Cheeky!

Step 4. 

Feet, wings and eyes.

Draw around the bottom of your monster on to paper.

Draw the feet you want him to have touching the circle.

Cut this out and draw around it on felt. My monster's feet are big and red! Put the circley part on to the bottom of your monster and sew around like in the picture below:

Cut out two wings if your monster has wings.

Sew them on by starting on one side and going through your monster to the other side of his body

Like this:

Do the same kind of thing to sew on the eyes.

Like this:

You're done! 

Uhoh, doodle monster went adventuring on the floor and met someone.

It's OK, it's just Hopper. Smile for the camera!

Happy Sewing!