Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Cake Toppers Part 1 - Having a Cow

Last Friday I spent some time finishing up the cake topper that represents me. As you remember, I'd found an extremely cute pattern that I wanted to try and sew:


After buying the pattern, I realized that the stuffed animals were not tiny; they were at least 10-1/2" long. A bit too big for a cake, I thought, so I trucked off to a copy machine and re-sized the pieces by 50%.


That placed them firmly at about 5" an animal, and a fine size for our planned cake.

The pattern called for fleece, but I decided to pick up sheets of 8-1/2" x 11" felt instead. The fabrics are very similar in nature, but the felt sheets came in a wider variety of colors. I wasn't sure if Dr. Light wanted a brown or grey squirrel, so I just picked up everything. They were only 30 cents a piece.

The first thing I did was cut out my cow pieces according to pattern and start sewing them together. I admit, I'm not terribly good working with tiny things, but I did my best to remain diligent and not let my frustration get the best of me. It's hard to tell, but I decided to use brown spots for the cow's back.

cow_01

Next was a lot of slow pinning, sewing, and turning the cow right-side out. I made her horns black so they'd stand out from the spot. The ears would come later after she was stuffed. I was unable to turn her tail and horns right-side out because they were so tiny, but the stitching hardly shows.

cow_02
Squishy AND blind!

Next came the stuffing and sewing on ears. I chose to glue on some tiny black balls I bought for eyes, and after a moment of thought, I made a funny-looking veil for her, too.

cow_03

I did some spot-fixing, as the fabric at her neck and belly didn't quite line up the way the pattern suggested. I'm sure this was my error and not the pattern's - felt can get pretty slippery with such small pattern pieces.

I'm so pleased with how the cow turned out. The squirrel's going to be much harder, as I don't have a specific pattern for it. I'm going to use the pig pattern and hope I can form the head into something less piggy and more triangular/squirrelly. And add a big, fuzzy tail.

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