Woozy Waggies: Stuffed, Whiskered, and Bowed

And it's done.

My stuffing technique leaves a great deal to be desired. 

Even with newly narrowed seams and overly zealous seam grading, the ears are really hard to stuff. Not only are they tiny and already stuffed with seam allowances, but the stuffing has to travel up the front legs, through the neck, and around the head bend before finally reaching the ears. It's a bit awkward.

The whiskers may be overkill, but they disguise the mumps look I inadvertently gave the poor thing.

The pattern called for the whiskers to be cut out of wool, or alternately, yarn. I didn’t have any black wool yardage, nor could I find any black wool yarn, but I did have some black polar fleece that made a nice substitute.

The nose and eyes were supposed to be embroidered — yeah, right. Two faceted shank buttons give Scotty a blank yet steely-eyed gaze.

I did make a stab at embroidering the nose, the first time I’ve picked up an embroidery needle since I was nine and worked up a day-of-the-week tea towel. (Wednesday, Dutch girl, dreary household chore) While there wasn’t any embroidery floss, there was some black cotton yarn, in case I ever get ambitious enough to whip up this or this or this. I separated a strand, threaded up a huge needle to accommodate the still fairly thick yarn, and discovered that not only did the huge needle make huge holes in the fabric, the holes were so huge that stuffing exited along with the needle. (Have I sighed yet in this post?) Polar fleece to the rescue.

The pattern didn’t call for eyebrows, but I added them to balance out the whiskers. I’m not sure I like them. All that black is too much on a smallish toy. I think it would have worked better with a dark or patterned fabric, where the whiskers and eyebrows would have blended in instead of standing out so starkly. Next time, next time. The plaid bow is quite jaunty, though.

This version was just a trial, made to get a feel for the pattern. If the design gets a thumbs-up from the recipient, I’ll make it again, but only after substantially enlarging the pattern.

And even though it’s just a proto-Scotty, I do wish I’d done a little better job.

Woof.