Meet Namir!

Here’s Namir!  He’s a plush leopard and my first attempt at sewing a stuffed animal.  (I used the Funky Friends Factory Larry the Lion pattern, but for some reason I’ve never been a huge lion fan, so I left the mane out and chose a print fabric.)

I’m not entirely happy with the result, but I’m not entirely unhappy either. 

I had some seam allowance problems,  probably for two reasons.  The first is inexperience with the fabric type.  It’s a sort of fleece JoAnn Fabric calls ultra cuddle; it has a fur-like texture on one side and a shorter nap on the the other.  As it turns out, it slips easily against itself even if you put in 15 pins.  Combine that with inexperience with the pattern type.  Cutting the pieces and matching them up wasn’t hard, but sewing with the mound of fabric that develops as you add the pieces is something I’m not used to.  To this point I’ve mostly sewn flat things. 

On the plus side, I bought a yard and a half of material (one of the leopard print and a half of ivory) to make sure I had enough to make two (because often the first of something I try tends to not work out quite like I want), and the fabric is so wide I have enough material for four leopards.  Because of the grain requirements of the pieces and the possibility of uneven cut edges on the raw fabric, I don’t think I would buy less than a half-yard of this type of fleece.  It’s 60” wide though, so you could probably make a whole cat from a half-yard if you weren’t looking to use a contrasting color the way I did.  I used a scrap of felt for the nose since I didn’t need to buy yardage for the mane and it worked pretty well.

I think I was most intimidated by sewing in the bottom of the feet, but that part wasn’t so tough.  The biggest problem I had was definitely getting adequate seams, as I found out when I went to stuff Namir.  I found my fingers poking through places they weren’t supposed to: the back of his neck, two places on one of his legs, between his tail and the actual beginning of the turning/stuffing opening.  I imagine if I used regular fleece now instead of furry fleece I’d have no problems since it’s not so slippery.

Two things I’ll do for Namir’s first sibling: bigger eyes (I think the small dark eyes work for Larry because he’s a solid color that’s lighter than his eyes) and putting its ears a bit closer to the top of its head.

What have you tried that worked out better than you expected or gave you unexpected problems?