All of our friends seem to be having babies right now. I’ve been very busy sewing baby presents, and now I’m knee-deep in stuffed elephants.
I sewed a pair of blue and purple batik elephants for two new babies in Sydney:
I sewed a pink and green fellow for a baby in Whyalla:
I made a rather bizarre red floral dude for a new baby here in Santiago – (that one was shy of his blue ears and hid himself in the back of the first photo in this post – and I never managed to catch him on camera again after that! A slippery character.) and this pretty nifty psychedelic number is heading up to a new baby in California!
(I like the big foreheads on these elephants. It shows that they are deep thinkers.)
I used the “Tilly and Tommy” pattern from retromama on etsy for sewing my stuffed elephants. This pattern whips up neatly and quickly, and has lots of fun chewable bits like ears and trunk and tail for teething babies to gum on.
(you could also put some nice food-safe crinkly fabric into those ears. I didn’t have any on hand, so i didn’t, but a layer of noisy, cheerful crinkle in those flapping ears would make the elephants absolutely wonderful for teething babies! )
Even without a crinkle-layer, they look pretty cute. Mostly. The pink-and-green elephant is a little cockeyed. When I marked and sewed on the ears, it was rather late in the evening, and I was a little bit cross-eyed, and somehow the elephant turned out looking drunk.
The morning afterward, I looked at it and wailed.
Mr Tabubil raise a (rather cynical) eyebrow and said that no one would care less.
“But it looks so home-made!” I said.
Very patiently, he explained that cock-eyed or not, it has a gummable trunk and floppy ears for chewing on, and that’s all that counts with a 5 month old baby!
Huh. Chew-toy or not, from now on, all eyes are going on at a sensible hour. In the morning, when we’re all straight-faced and not a bit cross-eyed.
