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.


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.


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.


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.

Oh, chet!

About the time Dr. Light and I got engaged, DIY ideas blossomed in my head. I wanted to learn everything, DO everything. And I will still get about 90% of it done. However, one item that I wanted to DIM (do it myself) was our cake toppers.

We all know that Etsy can provide some of the most amazing toppers ANYWHERE. For example:

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So. Adorable.

However, my desire to make our own cake toppers took form in the idea of little crocheted figures of our favorite animals. For Dr. Light, a squirrel. For me, a cow or a poodle.

Pictures like this were my inspiration:

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They were so dainty and fun, and as a sew-a-holic, I love anything made from fabric or yarn.

So, I decided to teach myself to crochet. I bought some books. I had my mom work with me because I kept doing my loops the wrong way. I bought some big, thick yarn so I could see what I was doing and practice practice practice.

Do you know what I'm going to admit? I still don't know how to crochet. It's 8 months to the wedding, and I've realized that crochet is a skill that I'm not going to have time to pick up and perfect before the cake toppers need to be done. I never practiced, and my crochet books are sitting by the bed, oh-so-lonely.

This weekend, my pal Beverly and I hit up JoAnn Fabrics while we were waiting to get massages (oooh, heavenly!), and we sat down to look at patterns. I was flipping through a Simplicity book when I came across these:

I'm not sure why I didn't think of this before. I sew. That's my strength. The sewing machine and I could rule the world if we tried hard enough. So why aren't I SEWING the cake toppers?

My favorite pattern is the top one with the cow, pig, and horse. It would be really easy to turn one of the designs into a squirrel for Dr. Light, and if the stuffed animals are too big, I can take the pattern to a copy machine and re-size it. These, I can do. As soon as Simplicity has another pattern sale (or I get antsy and buckle down to buy it normal price), I'm picking up all the tools to sew us some adorable cake toppers.

Has anyone else had to re-evaluate a skill you wanted to learn for the wedding? Have you had to identify a strength you have and change a project to match it to get a task completed?