An owl and a pussycat

Warning: this is a massive post. Get yourself a cup of tea first or something. Seriously.

One of the nicest couples in the world got married last year. They live in Ireland and I met them through Twitter and was really touched to get an invite to their big day. They are just perfect for each other and it was an absolutely bloody beautiful wedding. I danced all night because my feet were happy too.

I started to make these toys before the wedding but (in typical Goggins fashion) it took me months to actually get round to finishing them.

The owl and the pussycat poem was perfect for them; not only because it's a brilliant poem about love, but because one of them is an Owlyface on Twitter. Originally I didn't put their @ names in because I thought they might find it awkward, but if you follow me then there's a high likelihood you follow (at least) her too (if not both of them).

(Pssst, between you and me... they're called @midweshterner and @sirthopas. And they're really very lovely)

I thought I'd do this as almost a tutorial. Not a proper one, because I made the patterns up out of my head. If it's too rambly then you can just look at the pictures, but you will completely fail the quiz at the end.


I started with the owl.

I cut out bits of paper to work out the shapes I needed, then used these as templates for cutting out the fabric.

I went for gold, blue and green for the owl because I think they're the colours of my friend's favourite sporting team. I couldn't tell you what the sport is, because it's a weird made up one which only Irish folk have ever heard of. Something like lacrosse but where you kick peoples' heads in or something.

Anyway... then I pinned the shapes to the front of the Owl so I wouldn't do anything crazy when it came to sewing them on.

I've used this gold material for making an owl before (I've made some owl toys in the past as presents) and I remembered after I'd started how I'd sworn never to use it again because it frays like mad. It's a really silky material. Too late by this point though, I was committed to it now.

Then I added buttons for eyes.

 I like to do a kind of embroidery around the edge of the fabrics so it looks neat. I don't know what the correct term for this is, but it's bloody time consuming and fiddly. The technical terminology in my house is 'arsing about because of the bloody OCD'.

On a related note, I do all toy sewing by hand. This is probably very silly, because I'm sure a machine would do the same - or better.

You can see the gold fabric bulging here too. Annoying gold fabric. Once I'd finished the face it suddenly frayed to the point where I had to go over the whole lot again. I did not have a happy.











Pre-fraying incident. Happier times these.

Oh yeah, and at some point I stitched on the wings. This whole tutorial thing isn't quite working out yet eh?










Now for the back:

This was my first attempt at sewing text and I was pretty happy with the results. I printed the words out on paper first, traced it onto the material, and then sewed over that. I think this was my favourite bit and definitely something I'd like to try again.

Once I'd finished I cross-stitched the piece of material onto the back of the owl.














Now that both sides were ready I could pin and sew them together - good sides facing and leaving room for turning and stuffing later. I left the space for stuffing where the cloaca would be on a real owl, but that's because I'm a wrongun. You could leave the space anywhere really - so long as you're a neat stitcher later on.

 That's a leather sofa by the way, not a horrible skin condition.

Turn them the right way, et voila!

 Hooray!

And then get stuffed. Stuffing... get stuffing...


I use a toy stuffing that's machine washable and designed to be used in toys. You can probably get some from a craft shop. I bought loads when it was half price in a closing-down craft shop sale (sad face).

Once you're stuffed you need to sew up the bum hole and you're done! (Ahem)

I couldn't get the stuffing to sit right on the bottom. I don't know why it was being difficult, so she had a wonky derriere. She's still cute though.



Now for the pussycat

If you're still with me at this point then congratulations! You should probably have a sweet. Go on, you deserve it. I'll try to make this one less wordy, because it's basically 'repeat as above - except make it a cat'. I've never made a cat toy before so this was, in a way, a bit more exciting than the owl.

The gentleman part of the couple isn't a cat on Twitter, so to be honest he mostly got lumped with the cat because it's the other animal in the poem. However, he does have amazing red hair, so I thought I'd use a lot of red for the cat.

Cat-face.

Cat-feet.

Stitch-y tail-y

 Front and back.

Besides the red colour scheme I basically just used fabrics from my stash which I felt complimented each other.

I cross-stitched on a lot of this material because it was less inclined to fray.

Sewing over the pencil tracing.
















I love that the backs continued the poem and were therefore matching. This is the bit which made me feel warm and fuzzy.

Deflated cat (pre-stuffing, and now with whiskers and toes).

And now for the big ta-da moment!

...drum roll please...

........................................................

................................

.............

 

 

The next one's a bit terrifying...

They're beautiful aren't they? I am so pleased with how they turned out. Sorry about running out of steam verbally in the second half of the post, I figured I'd let the pictures speak for themselves.

Laters potatoes! 
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