The Toy Dog Project (with the right pattern this time!)

Welcome to the world Toy Dog!

This little fellow is what I spent my Saturday afternoon doing. He took about 3 and a half hours from start to finish, accompanied by a soundtrack of Katy Perry and John Legend. (And a Danish pastry which I rewarded myself with at the end!)

A few weeks ago I first tried the Daffy Dog Project from Sewing World Magazine and it didn’t exactly go to plan. A pattern piece was missing from the pattern sheet but I didn’t realise until it was too late and ended up making a dog with a rather funny body.

If you look at him next to the correct dog he looks like he’s been run over with a cartoon steam roller!

Second time round, with the correct pattern downloaded from the internet, the dog was pretty straightforward. You construct the body inside out, first by sewing the tail on to the side pieces and then sewing the side pieces to the main body section.

The ears then get sewn to the head pieces which are then both sewn to a central head section, and that’s then turned through the right way and inserted into the body.

That bit is the only really tricky section as you have to make sure it’s all the right way round otherwise you’ll end up with a weird upside down head! Also I didn’t quite sew the head on enough and ended up with stuffing poking through a hole when I came to stuff it. Luckily I was able to do some repair sewing so it worked out okay.

After stuffing the toy you sew up the dog’s bottom and then add on button and a ribbon for detail. And there you have it, a toy dog!

This one was all made using left overs from other projects, the ears are this top, the brown bits are this fancy dress outfit, and the cream material is a top I bought material for but never got round to sewing. The vintage-style buttons were bought for the top too, so at least they’ve come in useful eventually!

My plan is to make more of these for presents in the near future, as I think they’d make lovely little personal gifts. I’ll be getting some new material for those though to make them themed. I’m looking forward to buying some snazzy new fabric for that!