How To Make A Felt Fox Stuffie

Welcome to Craft School. We're going to continue our love for felt by making our first stuffy. And this little fox, we're going to show you all the details and how to make it. You can give this as a gift or keep it for yourself. For this project, you will need the pattern, which you can print out in the link below. I've picked three different colors of felt. One is the fox color, a black and a white. I have embroidery thread in black, rust, and white, and two buttons for the eyes. And then you'll need some polyfill to stuff the fox. The tools that you'll need for this project are a hot glue gun with low temperature glue, a pair of scissors, I have a black pen, a chopstick for adding the stuffing, and a needle that will hold embroidery thread. I've started by cutting out all the patterns, and each pattern has a note telling you how many pieces you'll need. And you can use this little illustration as a reference of what colors to cut out of each shape. Now, two methods that I have for cutting out patterns is to use a pen and just mark around the edge lightly, and then take away the pattern and cut it out, or go ahead and pin this to the felt itself and cut it out that way. So I'm making this fox as an heirloom, and I've used 100% wool felt. And you can go underneath the video and find all the resources to find this felt. We also would recommend using a wool blend felt, and you can find those resources, there's two. You can also go back and watch my felt 101 video and learn all about the different qualities of felt. We'll start the project by creating the face. And the first thing I will do is glue the black nose onto the muzzle, just a little tiny bit in the middle, and place it onto the white muzzle. If you have a little bit of fuzz left over, you can use some sharp scissors to clean that up. Looks pretty good to me. And then you'll take your black pen, and you'll draw the mouth very fine, just a hint. And we're going to stitch right over that with the black floss to make our mouth. I've threaded my needle with black embroidery thread, and I'll start in the back. I haven't tied a knot here, because I'll show you how I end and start my stitches. Put the needle right underneath the nose, almost touching the black. Actually, I've touched the black just a little tiny bit. And bring it through. I just want the single. You can see here, there's my double. One stitch down, and then three stitches to make the curve of the mouth on one side. And an easy way to do that is to stitch and come back, stitch and come back. That way, you can make sure that you put it right back in the hole of the last stitch. So I'm starting here on the right, and bringing it back over to the left. Just the one side of the mouth, and then I'll do the same thing to the other side. And these stitches are left to right. Now, the way that I start and finish these threads, if I tied a knot in the back, it would add a little bit of bulk, and I don't want that. So I'll trim it, leaving a little bit, probably a quarter of an inch on each end. And then just take a tiny bit of glue, just to keep it in place so that it won't slide back through. Not too much, because we still need to stitch around the edge. Now, I'll put it in place, watching the pattern there, and I'll stitch around the muzzle next. I've tied a knot at the end of my white thread. And starting at the bottom, I'll add a running stitch around the muzzle. And I love the added detail, because it makes it look homemade. You don't have to have a big or a small stitch. It's either way, just make it yours and be consistent, and that's all you need to know. I'll tie a knot on the back to finish up this stitch, but I'm going to leave the white thread on my needle, and I'll show you why. On the drawing, you'll see these little white dots on the forehead and stomach, and we call these seed stitches. I'm gonna tie a knot at the end, and you just eyeball this. Simple stitches, I'm going to do the center one first, and then the two outside stitches. Move down to the belly. I'm making these stitches a little bit longer, and there's five of them. For the ears, you're going to wanna sew these little tiny pieces onto the black, and I'm showing you here a finished one, where I've actually sewed the outside of the black as well. You can see the positioning. When we sew this inside of the fox, you'll wanna place it a little bit higher so that it doesn't overlap the white, but only overlaps the black. So we'll start by just sewing this top layer of the white onto the top layer of the black on both sides. The last piece of white that we'll stitch is the tail, and just like the ears, you'll wanna make sure that you mirror the back and the front. So I've placed these pieces. You can see the stitch. I'm just doing one small stitch along the edge of the jags before we actually sew it all together, and this is also just a top stitch. I've gathered all the black pieces, and I finished some of the paws and the legs and the ear, and I'm gonna show you. All of them are finished with the blanket stitch, and then these, the paws and the feet, are stuffed, where the ear, we're just gonna blanket stitch the outside curve, and then we'll sew it into the head. So I'll start with that. If you need to practice on your blanket stitch, you can go visit the video Felt 101, and I show you the technique. While we still have our black thread on our needle, we'll stitch the eyes, the button eyes, onto the front of the fox's face, and I've placed them exactly where I want them, and we'll do, let's say, two or three stitches to hold it on. So for the little feet and paws, I've left one end open, and you'll take just a little bit of this polyfill, and I'm using my chopstick here to help get it down inside, and you'll wanna put in just enough to make it, you can still squish it, it's not super hard, but it has a rounded shape. Make sure all the white fluff is inside, and then stitch it closed. I've met my thread for where I started, and I'll tie a knot, and then put my needle all the way back through to the other side of the paw. If I can do it here, let's see. There we go. And out the other seam, cut my thread close to the edge, and then you can just wiggle it back in and hide the end of the thread that way. I've placed my tail pieces back to back so that the outside is on both sides, and I'll stitch around all the way. Now, you can go ahead and put some stuffing in your tail if you want to, I'm not going to. I want it to be flat so that it lays flat on the back of the fox. I'll do a blanket stitch around the outside. For the body, I'll go ahead and blanket stitch around the outside, leaving an opening at the bottom, I'd say about three inches, to add the polyfill. Oh, and don't forget to tie your knot. When you get to the top of the head, you can position the ears and stitch them right in between, and see how I have placed the white of the ear right alongside of the orange of the head, and that's how I want them placed. I sew through all four layers. I'm stitching back just through the two layers of the ear, and then loop my thread back through to continue the blanket stitch on the one side. I've left an opening at the bottom, and that's where we're going to fill it with polyfill. And the easiest way is to take small little bunches, and just stuff it in there. Once I get enough in, I'll take this chopstick and use the fatter end to push the polyfill up into the head, and you'll want to put just enough polyfill in the fox, so it's still squeezable, it's not super hard, but it has a nice shape. So I'm pushing the polyfill deep into the fox, and I'll go ahead and sew this closed. And once it's closed, I'll squish it back to the edge again. Once you've tied the knot, put the needle through an edge, right through the hole there. Pull it through, and trim, and then you can pull the thread back through. And then this is where you can just sort of squish some of that polyfill back down into the lower part of the body. It works really well to hot glue the feet and the arms onto the fox. If you want to stitch it, you can do that as well, but I find this works because the fiber and the glue just really holds together, and they will never come off. Just adding a little bit of glue at the top. You have to be very careful when you're using hot glue and felt, because once you touch the felt, it's there. So make sure you know exactly where you want to place it. Hold that until it's cool. And then I'll add his feet right at the edge. Now we'll do the same thing with the tail. I'm putting the glue right at the base of his back so I know that my tail's centered, and place his tail. Hold that until it's cool. And for a final touch, I might add a little bit of stitch at the top of his tail just to hold it on his back. You can use the techniques that I've shown you on how to make this felt fox for pretty much any of the stuffies that we have on our site. And these projects are great for both beginner sewers or people who are more advanced, because it always gives you extra practice on making those blanket stitches perfect. We'll see you at our next Craft School class.