How to Make a Felt Plush
Felt plushies are increasingly popular toys that are easy to make yourself. Felt is inexpensive and is great to use with many decorative applications, such as yarn, glitter paint, buttons, or rickrack. Your options are numerous when designing your own felt plush. Here you will make a felt plush monster -- monsters allow for a lot of creativity with materials, colors, and shapes, so you can make as many modifications as you like with these basic instructions.
Things You'll Need
- Felt, in at least 3 colors
- Tracing paper
- Marker
- Scissors
- Thread
- Needles
- Yarn
- Polyester stuffing
Instructions
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Preparing the Pieces
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1
Buttons work well as eyes, spots, or tentacle suckers. Design your felt plush monster and determine its size and shape. Decide which features you want to be cut from felt, stitched with yarn, or represented with buttons or other add-ons.
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2
Use your favorite toys or cartoon characters as inspiration. Draw your patterns onto the tracing paper. Draw the body shape for the monster with the black marker on the tracing paper. Draw any other shapes you plan to cut from felt separately on the tracing paper.
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3
Cut out all the shapes from the tracing paper, and pin them to the appropriate felt color. Fold the felt in half first if you need two of a shape, such as for the body or the eyes -- then you can cut through both layers at the same time.
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4
Cut out the felt shapes, using the patterns. Then remove the pins and patterns.
Sewing the Monster Plush
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5
Sew on any other add-ons at this time as well. Sew the monster's felt features onto the body pieces, such as the eyes, mouth, teeth, and claws. You can sew the features on by hand or with a sewing machine. Sew them on using yarn or embroidery floss for a more "crafty" look.
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6
Use a smaller needle if the felt bunches during sewing. Lay the two monster body pieces together, right sides facing in. Sew the two halves of the monster together, leaving a four-inch opening along the monster's side for stuffing.
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7
Turn the monster right side out. Stuff the monster with polyester stuffing.
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8
Fold the felt edges along the opening inward and pin them together.
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9
Sew the opening shut, using a whip stitch. Knot the thread at the end, and trim the excess. You now have a decorative felt monster plush.
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Tips & Warnings
Use yarn as hair or tentacles.
To save on sewing, you can glue on felt pieces using fabric glue.
If the felt is causing your sewing machine to bunch up the thread, layer the felt top and bottom with tissue paper and then sew. Tear off the tissue paper when finished.
Draw the monster body slightly larger than actual size on the tissue paper -- you will need at least 1/4 inch of felt around the edge for the seam.
You can also use embroidery floss instead of thread to sew felt by hand.
Only use small parts such as buttons for toys not intended for children under three years old.
References
Resources
- Photo Credit Jupiterimages/Comstock/Getty Images Ablestock.com/AbleStock.com/Getty Images Hemera Technologies/PhotoObjects.net/Getty Images Jupiterimages/Photos.com/Getty Images Jupiterimages/Creatas/Getty Images
