Cute Cuddly Animals: pattern #1351 - patterns

I love doing little kid costumes!  My very first licensed pattern was a toddler sized pattern for McCall's actually.  And it was the first home sewing pattern ever for a costume in that size range.

SEE! 

My then 2 year old son was my inspiration.


This was a very long time ago.

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So today I thought I would show you the photos I took of these new costumes before I sent them off.  You can see the details a little better than in the photos on the envelope.

And I have some pattern making photos also, down below.

This is the owl.  The face is flat, except for the little beak that pokes out a little bit.  The wings are made separately and then tacked on.

The tail for the raccoon is sewn stripes, not hard.  But the face has several layers.  I will show the sewing of this face in a future blog ... soon.

The fox is the easiest.  He was the first one I did as well.


The face is appliquéd on flat and the tail simply has an appliquéd tip sewn over the basic tail shape.

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The back of the hedgehog is where all the action is.  But the hood is fun. It is the only one that is very three dimensional.  Below I will show how I worked on the pattern.

To work on hats and hoods for little kids and babies I made myself a head, quite a while ago. I pin it upright on my table so I can use it to drape over.

I, also, pulled out and copied a basic toddler hood pattern I had for a starting point.  No sense in reinventing the wheel, so to speak.

Now, I can guess at the shape I want.

I knew I would need to add padding for the hedgehog hood so I made a small pillow to work over and pinned that to the tap of the muslin head ... poor thing.

So, even if I had a toddler around to try things on, I couldn't do the things to him that I do to this head.

Then I sewed up (in felt) the pattern I had guessed at, using the basic hood to start. There is only so much that can be imagined and measured.  Patterns always need to be tested and altered then tested and altered, etc.

Now I cut and spread out my pattern in the same manner the felt hood was cut.

Then cobble it together with tape.  Next, I sewed THIS version in felt.  It required some more tinkering which I then transferred to the pattern. At some point I did make a completely new, nice, uncut-up and taped pattern piece. But, this is how I work ... #1 an educated guess ... #2 sew up the educated guess ... #3 correct the educated guess ... then repeat until it looks like I want it to.

The next couple blogs will show the sewing of some of the potentially confusing parts of these costumes.