Easy felt strawberries

Why not make some simple strawberries for decoration, or for kids to play with?

Step 1: Draw a circle on a red piece of felt (or other fabric), and cut into thirds.

Step 2: Embroider little strawberry seeds

Step 3: Sew up side up strawberries (by hand, or by machine), with right sides facing (inside).

Step 4: Turn the strawberry right-side out. Sew a gathering stitch along the top of the strawberry, and fill with some stuffing.

Step 5: Pull the gathering stitch tight and fasten at the top with a few more stitches. Then cut some leaves from some green felt.

Step 6: Fasten the leaves to the strawberry. Admire!

Tiniest dotee yet

I don't know what happened, here. I woke up one morning and spied the orange colour of these large beads in the bookcase near my bed.

Toy Society Drop: No llores, Lorretta #2 (with added lightning!)

Since I made the ¡no llores, Lorretta! pattern available, I thought I'd better test it. The first time I made the toy I didn't really use a pattern.


I had different colours of felt to work with, so it came out a little differently. Still pretty cute, I reckon.

After making the toy, I made a few adjustments to the pattern for next time (the right hand was a little wonky, redid the cloud bumps between the arms...). Looking at the pictures now, I probably should have also trimmed the dark felt a bit more so it didn't show up on the happy side!

I decided to leave her for someone to find, as a Toy Society Drop (#1332).

I left Lorretta attached to a tree near one of Lake Burley Griffin's walking tracks (Canberra, Australia) around midday.

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Related post: Free toy pattern: Lorretta

Free toy pattern: Lorretta

UPDATE: Pattern updated 09/10/10

UPDATE: Alternate "retro" version of pattern added 09/10/10
Please scroll down for details.

You may recall I did a Toy Society Drop (#1179) earlier this year called No llores, Lorretta!

This was the toy in question:


I've finally gotten around to making a pattern for it, which I am releasing under an attribution, share-alike creative commons license, which means you are allowed to modify and redistribute the pattern, as long as you do so under the same license and give credit.

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UPDATE: After realising that toys made from the original pattern posted here look quite different to the ones in the photos above, I made a second pattern which matched the first toy better. I'm calling it the "retro" version. I also added a lightning bolt to the original pattern.
The files below have been updated, and the old version is still available too.

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Original pattern v2.0:

• pattern PDF (A4)
• pattern PDF (US letter)

Retro pattern:

• retro pattern PDF (A4)
• retro pattern PDF (US letter)

If you want to edit the pattern directly in Inkscape or an equivalent program, here are the original design files:

Original pattern v2.0:

• pattern SVG (A4)
• pattern SVG (US letter)

Retro pattern:

• retro pattern SVG (A4)
• retro pattern SVG (US letter)

Lorretta comes in shy of 15cm (~6") but the pattern can be easily scaled to any size. The construction is very basic, hence the lack of tutorial. I used running stitch in matching colours to sew the face to the cloud and running stitch in black (for contrast) to sew the two main pieces together. I started with the arms and used a chopstick to stuff in small amounts of polyfill as I went.

Mary Corbet has a fantastic video library of stitches including running stitch and blanket stitch.

I hope you enjoy the pattern, it's fun to do a little hand sewing from time to time!

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Related posts

• Toy Society Drop: No llores, Lorretta!
• Toy Society Drop: No llores, Lorretta #2 (with added lightning!)

Toy Society Drop: No llores, Lorretta!

I wasn't in the best frame of mind when I got home from work. So I decided to make a toy for a Toy Society Drop (#1179).

Flicking through my sketch book, I found this illustration, inspired by Llorie the bipolar cloud in the plush-o-rama book.

I didn't trace the sketch or anything, I just winged it... hence the clover-shaped hands! The cheeks & tear were an afterthought. It was therapeutic hand-stitching and stuffing the toy. And trying to do a drop-off without getting spotted is always exciting!

I left Lorretta attached to a tree outside the old bus depot markets (Canberra, Australia) around 5pm. When I passed by the tree again around 9pm she was still hanging there..!

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Related post: Free toy pattern: Lorretta

A gold monocle and a seedy moustache

Meet Sir Reginald Walter, the most eligible bachelor in the dotee world, created for The Bachelor Dotee swap on swap-bot. He has a seedy moustache and a gold monocle! His hankie coordinates with his stripey blue tie! He has a slick part in his full head of hair! He looks a bit like the Monopoly man! He is refined and wordly! And he brought flowers... I'm sure you can see why he drives all the dotee girls wild.


Unlike Dotee Dad USB, where I cut around the countour of the head, here I decided to have a background. I think it worked well. As an added bonus, I used up some cute scraps and a cute button I acquired from the local op-shop.

Once again, I felt compelled to have the back of the dotee mirror the front.

It took several hours to make, and I did the felt in layers. The final dimensions were: 4" tall, 2" tail, 2.5" hanger. Because of the small size, I didn't use real buttons, but instead worked the gold thread into french knots.


I sketched the dotee while having a coffee at my favourite local café. I set up a blank template & was happy enough with the first sketch to go with it. Sir Reginald Walter may have lost the walking stick, but he remained pretty true to the sketch!

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Related posts:

• Incoming: bachelor dotee
• Dotee Dad USB

Christmas Dotees

Merry Christmas everyone!

I hope you all enjoy it, however you choose to celebrate this occasion.

Who could that handsome fellow be?


The countdown to Christmas has transformed crafting from a relaxing pastime to a frantic race against the clock for me. This is compounded by sending to people in other states and having to rely on the postal system.... a postal system that is experiencing strikes at the moment.

Having little choice, I bought an overnight satchel. So there I was at 5:55pm (the deadline is 6pm), trying to stuff my satchel in the special yellow post bin, unable to get it in. A man sitting on a bench nearby watched on with wry amusement. He mentioned that there were a few workers still in the office. I pleaded with them through the glass, but they shook their head and ignored me. Seeing me re-emerge with the parcel, the man from the bench helped me somehow squeeze the parcel through the slot. I love helpful strangers!

Back to the dotees...


Santa's body is about 6.5cm (~2.75") and the angel's is about 8cm (~3.25"). It took a long time to settle on the Angel's body colour, and her wings were quite labour intensive. The charms are from last year's post-Christmas sales.

I always like to compare my final creations to their sketch-form. Let's take a peek...

• Santa's head got much larger, so the gloves had to go. Otherwise, he's pretty similar!
• The angel was originally going to have gold ringlets (see my previous itty bitty dotee to see what that looks like), but I went for a different look in the end. The blue body and black hair contrast more in real life. I probably should have stuck with stitching the star design on her body, but I'm having a bit of a love affair with felt!

Just for laughs, I left in little bits of other sketches of dotees... these were done by a friend who decided I was doing too many cutesy designs and should include some gore in the next batch. There's also the bottom of a snowman dotee which didn't end up being made... maybe next year!

To finish off, I'd like to take this chance to thank whoever invented the purple disappearing ink pens... it has made stitching faces so much easier!

Eugene wants a hug!

I finished Eugene last night, so he'll be off to join the everyone else's toys for the Softies for Mirabel drive soon :)

He turned out pretty well, though I had trouble with a few things. I struggled with the face stitching and ended up using small black felt circles for the eyes. I was incapable of sewing the horns on straight, and it took me ages to do the last step where you tuck in the bottom and sew on the legs... but it was worth it!

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Related post: Udderly lovely cow for Mirabel

Udderly lovely cow for Mirabel

I'm sure many of you have heard of Pip's annual Softies for Mirabel drive. If you haven't, head over and read about it. It's a worthwhile cause and a good excuse to make a softie!

I completed my fourth-last piece of assessment for the semester today (optimistically worded!), a study of the morals and ethics in a short story by Isabel Allende. Since the essay's in Spanish, I read over it again and again, knowing that no matter how hard I try, there are always mistakes... very frustrating! At least when you're sewing, you can see the mistakes and unpick them... anyway, to cheer myself up I chose a softie to make, settling on Fliss Dodd's pattern: The Udderly lovely cow from Pip's Meet me at Mike's book.

{source}

It's been high on my "to do" list for some time, but I could never decide which fabric to use.

I took the plunge and chose soome fabric and cut out all the pattern pieces. The floral patterned fabric is from my parents' old sheets and the red clay-coloured fabric is from an op-shop. The horns are made out of gorgeous hand-dyed wool felt from winterwood toys, whereas the face & heart are straight acrylic felt.


Stay tuned for the finished product!

If you're thinking of sending in a toy, try and have it in by the 1st of December. They'll be on display for 10 days before being divvied up amongst the kids. Happy crafting!

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Related post: Eugene wants a hug!

Felt monkey phone case

I bought a new phone recently - not because my trusty old brick of a Nokia finally died (that thing was indestructible), but because I had carelessly misplaced it. After three weeks of searching, I briefly toyed with the idea of forgoing a mobile phone altogether, before caving in and getting a new-fangled one. I also shelled out for a protective plastic case... which I promptly broke.

Hence the birth of Grégoire, my grumpy phone cover, inspired by Rosa Pomar's soft toy from the book Plush-O-Rama.


He's made of felt, with bamboo wadding to offer a little protection.... the phone slides neatly in and out of the mouth, much to the bemusement of those around me at the time!

Wool felt camel from Sew Soft Toys

Meet Miguel. He's made from 100% hand dyed wool felt from Winterwood toys, a company based in Australia. If anyone knows of any other suppliers of wool felt here in Aus, please let me know! Lincraft and Eckersleys here in Canberra only seem to stock acrylic felt. Winterwood toys stock a variety of colours, available individually or in themed lots: "animal colours", "earthy colours", "rainbow", "skin colours" and "spring". They also have commercially dyed felts.

It was the first time I've worked with hand-dyed wool felt (It makes a difference!), and it was beautiful. Thick, soft, dense... I even liked the uneven colouration from the hand-dying process.

I also bought the book "Sew Soft Toys" from the nice folk over at Winterwood toys.

It has some great patterns in it, including the camel. I had to reduce the pattern size to 75% to fit on the 20x22cm felt pieces I ordered (I ordered the "animal colours" set, you can see them in the top photo). I didn't add the seam allowance, opting to use a blanket stitch to sew the pieces together, which worked well. Good for a lazy winter's evening!

Toy Society Drop: Greggles

Meet Greggles. He's adapted from a pattern of the same name in Plush-O-Rama.

He is made from some old pyjamas of mine (the stripey material) and some short red toy fur from the bargain bin at Lincraft. The long fur for the eyes came from Love and a Sandwich's etsy shop where you can buy a small bag of assorted fur offcuts. The eye-rings and mouth are made from hand-stitched felt.

I made him especially for a Toy Society drop (#295) - check out the site for more plushies!

I bundled him up and left him with a letter in an envelope explaining what the Toy Society is about, and a colourful tag that said "Take me home - I'm yours".


I left him near Manuka (Canberra, Australia) this morning (11 May 2009) and when I went past this afternoon, he was gone. I salvaged the ribbon and tag which had been left dangling.

Hope he found a good home :)

I'd like to do some more of these drops, but not before I finally get around to making up some morsbags...

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Related post: Toy Society Drop: Zing the polite cat

Matryoshka nesting dolls (squeebles!)

These are the nesting dolls I sent to my partner for the Matroyska Doll Swap! on swap-bot, along with the accompanying note:

Squeebles are born colourless and with no way to express themselves. Their bodies are pure white, and their eyes are black pools , incapable of expression. Their only other feature is their black hair. To compensate for this, they dress in the most colourful clothes they can, they favourite colour being anything fluoro. Also they have no mouth, they express affection by forming nesting groups. Families are usually found in this conformation, similar to Matryoshka dolls!

I made them from fluoro felt sheets (the colours don't show up too well, the green really is obscenely bright!) and some small plastic flower decorations sent to me by Dot with a purchase.

The pattern for them can be found at Maize Hutton's site.

Here is a close up of the smallest one, because I love miniature things!


And here are the Squeebles, innocently surveying the chaos that brought about their creation :)

Sheep dotee

I made this for the Dotee Tag thread on the swap-bot forums.

The face is a simple embroidered felt cut-out.

After cutting out the two body pieces from white felt, I proceeded to sew a WHOLE lot of small white pom-poms to one of the pieces. It took longer than I originally thought, because I also had to sew them to each other so that they'd stay tightly packed.

On the plus side, I didn't need to put much stuffing in it

Dotee Dad USB

I was stumped, again, as to what to get my Dad for his Birthday.

Since I've been doing felt-work for swaps on swap-bot, I decided to make my Dad a dotee of himself. I couldn't find any letter beads to spell out "Dad" for the tail, but I found thought this tiny USB would do the trick - and make it functional, too! I put some family photos on the drive, too :)

As usual, I started out by sketching a crude design for the dotee:


When it came to making the dotee, I couldn't decide what to use as a background material for the area around the head - so I decided to dispense the background altogether. I stitched the shirt first, which was fun & it's 'open' at the neckline, that is to say you could place a small note or something inside the shirt. The pocket is also 'functional'.

The face was the hardest - it required so many fiddly little pieces of felt & much hand sewing too. The mouth and eyes/glasses were the last things to be added, and I'm still not entirely satisfied with them. I tried a few different things for each.

On the back, I cheekily added a thinning area of hair! I like that and other details - the monobrow, the "salt and pepper" speckly beard, the chest hairs, etc. I stuffed it with the fill from the inside of a pillow (but I had to keep stuffing in the head to a minimum so that the face didn't baloon out of shape. Since I stuffed the body first, the result was that the body is super puffy and the head rather flat!) which made the bottom button stick out. I used thin black ribboin for the hanger and added a few wooden beads to the USB hanger. The body is 4" tall and 1.75" wide. The hanger is 1.25" and the tail is a whopping 2.5".

I pretty much spent all day making this - it was very fiddly. I don't know if it'll ever leave the house, but in any case the USB screws off and can be carried by itself (though you won't lose it with that dotee attached!)

Incoming: itty bitty dotee

Meet Leonard! Isn't he adorable? He's the very first dotee I've received! I love the beading on his front. His body is made of fluoro green felt (front and back) & his face is made of white felt with french knot eyes.

He came travelling with me to a music festival & his face is a little grubby now, but still super cute :)

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• Related post: Itty bitty dotee fever

Itty bitty dotee fever

In my last post, I mentioned that I was having to redo my doll for the Itty Bitty Dotee Swap on Swap-Bot due to fraying.

Well.... it's complete! Behold the complete wheat dotee! You'll notice that the hair changed completely from the original sketch - I still haven't worked out how to do yarn hair! I think the bullion ringlets are cute though, even though she now looks like she is called Helga and should be serving beers part of Oktoberfest! I managed to salvage the face off the first dotee, only redoing the french knots (one was loose)

The wheat is a little off-center, and the bottom a bit crooked - but it doesn't really matter!


Complete, Helga measures 4"... she has a 2" long torso (1 1/4" wide) and the hanger & tail measure about 1" each. I decided that that was not itty bitty enough! I'm sure my swap partner wouldn't mind, but I'm sending her an even ittier bittier one too anyway. It was so much fun to make!

I stuck with the nature theme again. Meet Lady Dotee Bug!


She's made entirely of felt (the ladybug is from a novelty printed felt square) and is truly tiny! She was much quicker to sew up, and I used blanket stitch around the edges. And she has french knot cheeks!

So just how much smaller is she?


She's about 2 1/4" tall in total. Her torso is just under 1 1/2" long (3/4" wide), her hanger is 1/2" long and her tail is just over 1/4" long.

Unless you count the pseudo-dotee pig, these are my first dotees! :)

So what's next? Not a dotee! For my next swap I have to make a flower-person ATC... we'll see how that goes!

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• Related post: Incoming: itty bitty dotee

One-Day Swap

I made this ATC for the One-Day Swap at swap-bot.

The original sketch was for a dotee doll, but I didn't have enough nice fabrics to pull it off. However, after spreading all of my craft supplies out all over the floor to take stock of my supplies (they're all still scattered about, ahem), I decided that I had enough appropriate paper scraps to give an ATC a go.

ATCs are a concept that, like dotees, I had not come across before joining swap-bot. So this is my very first ATC. I'm still not comfortable with my drawing skills, preferring to do simple collage-type things for now.

You can't really tell from the scanned image, but the ATC is layered:

• The red hat-band & dress are made from corrugated red cardboard
• The hat itself is made from textured black cardboard. The brim stands out, because I stuck a piece of felt under it.
• The "button" is a "flat" wooden bead
• The face is made of felt, with embroidered eyes & mouth.
• The fringe is also made from felt, but the hair that hangs down is braided embroidery thread (they move around freely)
• The shawl's fringe is green Yarn
• The shawl and hills are made from some scrapbooking paper & the sky was cut out of an advertising catalogue

I love all the different textures & recycling all the scraps of paper & material I have been hoarding for what feels like an eternity!

Glucksschwein swap

I made this pig for the Glucksschwein swap at swap-bot.

I made it from Runo's pattern, making it half-size. The colouring is inspired from a black and white potbellied pig.


I saw that my swap partner also likes Dotees. Having only just discovered them myself, and after looking through many galleries of them on Flickr, I decided to make my first one.

My housemate liked the pig toy I made, although it became known as the "cow-pig". I sketched a "cow-pig" dotee design and am happy with how it turned out!