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.