How to Sew the Bottom to the Body of a Stuffed Animal

Video Transcript

"Hi! I'm Karen for Expert Village. This is going to be our open section. We want to leave this section open so that we can put the stuffing in after we finish sewing all the way around here. We'll have one little opening to put the stuffing in. We're going to start our sewing. I guess I'll start my sewing here and I'll go around this way. Again, you want to have a threaded needle with a nice good strong knot. We're going to start on the inside. So you just open it up a little bit, put your needle on the inside, and we're going to do the same stitching that we did all the around the top section and we're going to continue around the bottom section. So we want to hide that knot because the knot is not so neat looking. We're just going to tuck it in if it sticks out. There we go. Tuck it in, and then we'll do just a simple whip stitch all the way around. The whip stitch goes pretty much perpendicular to the edge of the fabric. Remember not to pull too tight because you'll get puckering, but you don't want to leave it too loose or your stuffing will show through when you stuff it. So just a nice taut, but just before it gets tight. That's what you want. When you come to the corners, you can change direction there. That's fine. You can give it a little bit tighter pull on the corner because you almost want it to pull in a little bit. When you come to this joint section where the top section splits and the bottom is straight, just make sure you get it nice and tight. Put the needle through right at the stitches that we ended with on the top section. We went in here on this side. Now we want to go in on this side right through where we already stitched, that top section. That way we'll get a nice tight join. We don't want to have a hole here because the stuffing will want to come out there if we have a gaping hole. You want to make sure that you get that joint stitched up nice and tight and then continue on. Now, my thread is getting short. I still have quite a ways to go, so I need to get another threaded needle and end this one. So open up here and you're going to come around and just go through one layer. So you go around and you come in through the inside. Pull that through. Then we're going to knot it on the inside. So you can kind of turn it a little bit. Just take a bit of the fabric. There's your loop, another loop. Cut that off. Then I have another needle all setup with a knot. I like to make a bunch when I know I'm going to need them. Start from the inside so that we can hide our knot. Start from the inside and go up through the outside. If the knot sticks out, just take the needle and tuck that in and continue on the way you were going all the way around."