I spied these cuties at the Sydney Craft & Quilt Fair back in June last year but made myself walk away at the time. While buying supplies for another softie pattern (for a more complicated creature I’ll introduce soon) from Kelani Fabric I came across the fabric panels by Saffron Craig again and had to get them as a warm up project.

It’s as easy as cut the front and back out, pin right sides together, sew around leaving a small gap, turn inside out, fill with stuffing, sew up the gap – you could probably do it in an hour so why it took me a good month or more to make I don’t know.

There are two videos on Saffron Craig’s website which show her making her softies which got me as far as cutting, sewing & stuffing. It wasn’t until I read this blog post on Chasing Cottons and saw photos of another softie being stuffed and sewn up by cute little girl hands that I got over my fear of  “what if I don’t do it properly?” and finished them off.

A couple of tips I would add to those already out there, some which I figured out while making my kitties and some that I worked out after and would consider next time…

• To minimise the amount of white showing around the seams, when pinning the front and back together hold them up to a light source so you can see where the outlines are, and check from both sides.
• If there are lines that match up like the collars on these kitties, use those as reference points to match up as well.
• Stuff them heaps! Leave a bit of room when you’re ready to sew up the gap, I found it helped to have a bit of room when initially turning in those seams to match up. Sew it up a bit so you can still fit a finger or pen/pencil through the gap comfortably and add some more stuffing then finish closing it up.

Or you can just ignore all that, slap them together and they’ll still be just as cute the way you make them.