A nice easy one to ease me slowly back into the tutorials! Continuing our Halloween crafts, I give you a pair of less than frightening monsters, some may even dare to call them cute!
They’re entirely hand sewn and the fun fur is very forgiving, so they make a great project for beginners or for the young sewer. Make them in a variety of colours and spread them around the house for some fluffy Halloween decorations, put a bell or a rattle in them and they become great toys for toddlers (as Declan will attest to!), or make three and you have fluffy juggling balls – just what everyone wants for Christmas!
You will need
- The Not So Scary Monster pattern
- Small piece of fun fur
- Scraps of felt for features and accessories
- Needle and thread!
To Make
- Download the pdf and cut out four (eight to make both of the monsters) of the body pieces from the fun fur, paying attention to the pile (the direction the fur lays), cut the features from your felt or make up your own funny faces – again, a great project for kids is coming up with as many silly faces as possible.
- Place two pieces right sides together, hand sew one side making extra stitches at the top and bottom points to reinforce. Continue adding each segment, in the same way until you get to the final seam. Sew halfway up this edge leaving a hole for turning and stuffing.
- Turn the monster the right way out and stuff with plush stuffing or rags, I also used a funnel to add some rice to weigh them down at the bottom so they would stand up cleanly – if you’re going to do this make sure your seam stitches are nice and small so rice doesn’t sneak out!
- Sew the hole using an invisible stitch, you now have a fluffy ball
- Add some character to your monster, make it scary, goofy or just a little confused. Use felt to create eyes, noses and hats attached using a simple running stitch to give your monsters a life of their own.
- And finally, upload photos of your finished monsters to Flickr and share them with the CraftBlog Group!
As with all the patterns and tutorials on CraftBlog, this is licensed for personal use only, please do not sell or make any profit from the Not So Scary Monsters Pattern, either in pattern or completed form. Thank you!
On October - 8 - 2008
Great monsters! They’re very cute.
[...] For details go here: Not-So-Scary Monsters by Fern of CraftBlog [...]
They are fabulous, thanks for the tutorial!
Tried this pattern and ended up with a very elongated monster – wondering if maybe you need to use 5 or 6 of the pieces, not just 4…
Hmm, that’s odd, I’m just about to go out Rose but give me a couple of hours and I’ll get back to you
sorry you’re having problems.
Okay, just made one up again using exactly the pdf pattern and I’m not having this issue at all, have you stuffed him yet? I end up with a fairly elongated football shape until the monster is turned the right side out (so the seams are hidden) and stuffed. Are you using fake fur or cotton or felt? because that could be the reason as well.
If you have stuffed him and all still isn’t right, all I can suggest is, like you said, adding another segment in there to create a more spherical shape.
Please let me know how you go
[...] but it’s worth it for the lovely rotund shape that results. Thank you, Fern, for the great pattern and tutorial. Not-so-scary monsters by Fern at [...]