Monday, 21 February 2011

Felt lavender toys

The bag of felt monsters that I made for one of my baby nephews for Christmas was a hit.  He loved taking them all out of the bag, and then posting them back in.  He could happily squish and chew them too.  Since then, I've been thinking about making something similar for my Etsy shop, but with some lavender stuffing.  Everybody who saw the monsters asked if they were filled with lavender, and each time I explained that they weren't, I thought to myself what a good idea.

So after much thinking and a few experiments, I made these felt lavender toys at the weekend.

Felt toys

Their bodies are filled with toy stuffing, and the fabric circles on their tummies are filled with lavender.  The children are enchanted with them, but I'm not so sure.

Felt toy with lavender

I find their faces a little creepy - embroidered faces are difficult to get exactly the way I had imagined. I'd planned to leave the edge of the fabric circle raw and unfinished, but when I finished them, I thought it looked a bit messy.

Felt lavender toy

This purple one had a different mouth to the other two.  I prefer this big smiley mouth, but the children said it looked wrong.

The combination of toy stuffing and lavender stuffing is good though.  They smell strong, because the fabric containing the lavender is just thin cotton; but they are still soft and squishy to hold.  C and O love them, and have put them in bed, next to their pillows.  That's a pretty good recommendation.

Felt lavender softie

I think I'm nearly there - perhaps just a few more experiments with embroidered faces are required.
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8 comments:

  1. dottycookie21 February 2011 at 15:56

    It's a very sweet idea. And it's always fascinating to see the evolution of a design!

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  2. magsmcc21 February 2011 at 17:57

    What was that TV programme from when I (42) was little? These are the characters, and they lived in a big interconnected set of bubble cells, appropriately decorated. Oh that will keep me enchanted all evening now!

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  3. Rachel21 February 2011 at 20:24

    Ooh! Babapapa! That's exactly what I thought when I saw them - I used to love that cartoon :)
    They look far too sweet to be described as monsters though!

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  4. kristina22 February 2011 at 07:59

    I love the embroidered faces--especially the eyes with the little eyelashes! K x

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  5. Peeriemoot22 February 2011 at 11:06

    They're lovely :-) - I especially like the one with the big smile! I've just stumbled across your blog via the Splash of Colour Flickr group - your monsters really leapt out at me, in a nice way :-D.

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  6. Anonymous22 February 2011 at 12:53

    They're lovely! I don't know if this would work, but you could put some kind of grain in as well, and have microwaveable warm toys instead of a hot water bottle.

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  7. The List Writer22 February 2011 at 19:22

    Peeriemoot and Planetcoop - thank you so much for your kind comments. I will get a baby review of them tomorrow as I'm going to give one to my little nephew and see if he screams in terror or grabs it and chews it!

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  8. Simone26 February 2011 at 14:47

    You really made me laugh saying that you found their faces a little creepy when you had created the faces yourself!!! I think they look great fun! Why don't you try drawing some different faces out onto some paper first to see what you like best? You could put the eyes closer together or further down and give each character a different expression.

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Even though I often do not have the time to reply to everybody, I really appreciate all your comments so much - thank you for taking the time to read my blog and share your thoughts on what I've written.

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