Skill Investigation: Cat

Intention

I was really curious what it'd be like to work with a pattern to create a stuffed animal so I chose to make a crouching cat that was featured in the Stitched Safari book. Rather than making it small, I blew it up to 3x the original size and used a black fabric with grey-blue fur for the entire body. I planned to make the ears and eyes out of white felt and the eyeball out of black felt. Instead of sewing on the outside (like the book intended), I decided to sew on the inside so the cat would look more natural. 

Process

The most time consuming part of the process (in my opinion) was measuring the seam allowance for every piece as well as cutting out the patterns. Due to the fur, I couldn't use the cricut (I think?) and I definitely didn't want to laser cut the pieces in case the fur caught on fire. 

I originally planned to use the sewing machine for the sewing but between how much the cat curved and the fact that I really like things to be accurate, I decided to hand stitch the whole thing. I decided to do a variation of the running stitch that was just doing it twice to fill out the spaces so it'd be secure, like the back-stitch, but wouldn't take as much time to complete. Later on in the process I realized there were a lot of parts where I couldn't machine sew it due to space so it worked out pretty well in the end. 

Product

Reflection

I decided to not give my cat eyes like I'd originally planned because I didn't like how the flat felt looked with the fur (it was very flat and dull). I think the only way to make it look as animated as the rest of the cat would be to buy eyes (like those of a teddy bear or stuffed toy) to sew onto the cat. I don't think it'd be possible to create it using just fabrics. I definitely learned that I was capable of sewing something more complicated than a 2D creation and that I enjoyed the process quite a lot.

Sample Book