Plushie Monsters

So, I have been making a lot of Christmas presents this year, but most of them are for adults who, conceivably, might read this blog. Therefore, no posts about those presents until after the holiday.

But, I am making a few presents for my 19-month-old daughter; among them, these adorable little monsters. They were super easy (outside of the damned hot glue gun, which burned both my thumbs), and I'm outlining the process for you here.

Earlier this year - in the spring, I think - I bought a bunch of these fabric bundles called Stax by Creative Cuts. (Here's the walmart.com page for a similar product; mine are patterned.) I originally intended to make pillows out of them, but never got around to it. Anyway, when I got this idea, this fabric - I guess it's quilting fabric - seemed like a great option. I also used a bunch of fabric I had on hand - old scraps from curtain projects - to make a few more.

The first step was to make a template, as I sort of stink at freehand cutting. I just made a rounded rectangle in Paint Shop Pro and then skewed it so that it was narrower at the bottom. Then, I printed it out, cut it out of the paper, and then started cutting the fabric shapes:

I wanted to make a set of monsters, one of each type of fabric I had, but my older daughter also wanted a set of these when she saw my idea, so I ended up cutting out enough rounded rectangles for 16 monsters, total, or 32 pieces of fabric. I laid the fabric so that I was cutting out 4 pieces at a time, fronts and backs for two monsters out of each pattern.

Next, I sewed the edges except for a spot to stuff them with:

And then turned them right side out:

Then, I stuffed them:

And sewed the stuffing hole closed:

This particular bit was a bit difficult, as I am not real experienced with closing seams so you can't see them. There is probably a tutorial on the Internet somewhere about how to do this part right, but the Internet was down when I was doing this because the weather looked like this:

Anyway, the closing didn't take a whole long time (about an hour and half or so), and I finally had my monster sets:

Next, I took some puffy fabric paint and drew facial fatures: mouths, mustaches, tongues, and fangs/teeth...

Once the paint dried, I used a hot glue gun to stick on some googly eyes, and we finally had our finished monsters:

A few things: I noticed that the heat from the glue gun actually started to melt the plastic in the googly eyes, so maybe another adherent would be a better choice. I experimented with a couple other glues with these eyes for another project and found that my 19-month-old could pull off the eyes with everything except the hot glue. Secondly, white acrylic paint might be better for the teeth, as the white puffy paint turned clear when it dried and it really doesn't look quite right. I'll probably go over the parts that are supposed to be white with some white paint later, just to make them look right.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed this little jounrey of making monsters!