Monster Stuffies!

There are so many tutorials out there to help you design your own monster stuffie, I figured "why not"  add another "how I did it"!

My mother likes to remind me how I'd plan birthday parties’ months in advance when I was a little girl. Not much has changed. I still like to plan parties, and now with 4 kiddos added to my mix I can go all out! When my youngest turned 2 & 4 earlier this year I knew we needed something special for their joint party.  As an added bonus I got to deplete my stash of some polar fleece and stuffing. I made 24 polar fleece monster stuffies, with a little design help from my kids of course!

First, I had my kiddos "design" their monsters.  Simple shapes...OK not so simple for them!  Finally I told them to concentrate on half an outline.  I folder each piece of paper in half and had them draw half a monster shape.  This was the cut out result:

Next, I digitzed some "monster eyes" and stitched them out on my embroidery machine.  I didn't want to go to all the effort of embroidering each monster with his/her own face, so I made the eyes various sizes to sew on each monster later.

Then we cut the polar fleece and "designing" their look:

All we did here is pin eyes, felt/fleece pieces for mouth, nose, teeth, etc. After sewing them on (using some zig-zag stitching), we had 24 little monsters on our hands!  Here you can see a sample of what was made:

It was a fun project!  My kids had a blast doing it and our party guests all got to take one home!  Whenever I'm at the preschool, some child will come up to me to tell me how their monster is doing.

The best part?  I'm now storing less fabric than I was before!

I'm linking up to http://hopestudios.blogspot.com/2010/10/tutorial-tuesday_18.html! &; http://georgiabe.blogspot.com/2010/04/monster-stuffies.html &; http://punkinseedproductions.blogspot.com/   AND all the other great linky parties over on the right side of the blog!