Elusive Flopsy - Stage 1

Flopsy is taking a little longer than I expected,mainly because I am trying a few things out for the first time. I am basing her on a pattern from Esprit Cabane called Fabric Remnant Mouse but have modified the pattern quite a bit. Particularly pleased with how the head turned out as I wanted fatter cheeks and a wider nose and bunny ears not mouse ones obviously!

I am also modifying the body and legs quite a bit so its going to take longer than I had thought but at least will produce an almost original pattern that I am happy with. Having a redo on the legs as I'm not happy with the ones I made last night.

As for the nursery, I am typing this from my new 'office' set up downstairs so we are getting there! Getting rid of the desk will be a milestone and I also have loads of packing and sorting to do still which I am setting myself up to do tomorrow.  Now it's there in black and white I have to do it although I am so tempted just to work on Flopsy instead.

Chime Owl Pattern

Here is a little soft toy I made out of some left over fabric from making the mobile. I wanted to make him a bit interactive so I added some texture into his wings by inserting foil in one side and cellophane (from the package the bells came in) on the other and some chime bells into his body.   The cellophane definitely works the best as its more crackly.  He will be tied to the side of the cot (when we eventually get one!)

Chime Owl

He was quite easy to make and as I had already made the pattern in Illustrator I thought I'd create a instruction pattern to follow in case anyone else wanted to make him.   It is down loadable from here: Chime Owl Pattern  I am thinking of making a mini version to go on the pram so will post that pattern too.

I'd really appreciate any feed back on how clear this pattern is to follow and any mistakes or improvement you think I could make.

Inspiration!

Its funny how inspiration works.  I'd been noodling over the colour scheme for the nursery for a while.  I wanted something none gender specific and definitely not pastels.  It's actually a bit disturbing how hard it is to find things that aren't pastel pink or baby blue unless you are going to spend a fortune.  Anyway I digress... I also knew I wanted to keep the walls and probably the furniture white, (the room is quite small and has been painted fairly recently) and accent it with something bright.    And I wanted to make a mobile to hang over the cot, probably with crocheted birds, and while looking for inspiration I found this lovely website from the US. www.spoolsewing.com with a free pattern to make this mobile:

So I changed tack regarding the crochet as all the patterns I could find were a little too chunky for a mobile and had a root through my swatches of fabric until I came across these two:

I love how the chocolate colour complements the bright turquoise and lime green and that the spots on the brown fabric are muted versions of them.  Bingo, these were my colours and the addition of the chocolate meant that if I needed to go neutral instead of bright for bedding etc, it would still work.

So I went to my favourite fabric shop and picked out a few more lengths to go with them,

then set to work.  These little fellas are actually pretty easy to make, the tricky part is folding and stitching the tail end,  I think I may have made my life slightly more difficult by printing the PDF in portrait so they are smaller than intended but I think that just makes them cuter.

So four down and about six more to go!  I just hope I can get the mobile to balance properly.