Sew A Softie Tutorial for Valentine's Day - Puppy Love

Things are moving a darn sight too quickly for me this year... today marks the 2 month count down to our moving date! I have so much to do, but I couldn't miss out on taking part in the Sew A Softie Tutorials round up for Valentine's Day. (Catch up with our other tutorials here)

I've always struggled to come up with handmade Valentine's gifts/creations, but this one came to me while I was walking the dog, so I've entitled it 'Puppy Love'

You will need:

2 pieces of red felt 10cm x 10cm

1 piece of pale pink felt 10cm x 10cm

1 piece of pink felt 10cm x 10cm

Scraps of black & white felt

Pink embroidery thread

Black embroidery thread

Red embroidery thread

Glue

A good handful of stuffing

Tweezers

Instructions:

1. Use all the pattern pieces to cut out 2 red felt hearts, 2 pale pink ears, 2 pink ears, 2 white eye pieces, 2 black eye pieces and 1 black nose piece. Take 1 pale pink ear and 1 pink ear and whip stitch them together. Do the same with the other ear - I reversed the colours, so the ears were not the same both sides, but you don't have to.

2. Turn the ear inside out - I used a pencil to poke the bottom of the ear up inside of itself and then used a pair of tweezers to pull it out of the top. If you are getting children to sew this pattern, you can skip this step and leave the ears right side out.

3.  Glue the whites of the eyes onto one of the red hearts.

4. Glue the black part of the eyes onto the whites. I used the tweezers again to get them in the right position. With younger children it might be easier to draw the blacks of the eyes on with a felt pen.

5. Glue on the black nose and using a pencil or pen, draw on the mouth.

6. Using your black thread, back stitch the mouth onto the face.

7. Pin both red hearts together with the ears sandwiched in between. Then using the red thread, back stitch round, following the picture above. Leave an opening for the stuffing.

8. Stuff the face, making sure it is full, but not over stuffed. Then back stitch up the opening and you have a finished Puppy friend!

I hope you've enjoyed making this along with me and keep a look out for the rest of our Sew a Softie Valentine's series. 

Happy New Year... Stressful New Year?

Well, we made it to 2017 - Hurrah!

Do you have any of the fluffy white stuff where you are? We had the lightest smattering last night, which had all the kids very excited on the walk to school today, even though there was barely enough for a snowball - bless 'em.

I'm very jealous of one friend, who lives in Oregon, USA where they've had 6 days off school already with more to come - I'm sure she's bored of it by now, but living in the UK, we very rarely see that much in one year, let alone in one go!

However, I digress. Did you have a good new year? We had a very busy holiday season as it's our last in the UK for a while. We're planning a big move, not a very far one, but a biggie... we're going to Southern Ireland!

We're moving from the purple arrow to the blue arrow and that little stretch of water causes so many more headaches!!

With that in mind, I'm trying not to take on too much as I have a whole house to pack up and ship overseas... but I have decided to join in with the 100 Day Project this year which encourages people to explore an idea for 100 days, as a creative exercise.

I'm going to recreate some of my favourite band logos in felt, ending up, I hope with 100 logos, with magnets in the backs which I can display on a magnetic notice board.

Typically the project starts next week, so I'm going to trying not to fall too far behind during the move.

I've not been successfully blogging for a while now, so if you want to keep up with what I'm up to, Facebook and Instagram are the best places to find me:

Grace's Favours Facebook Page

Grace's Favours Instagram