This giraffe was planned to be a simple bank holiday afternoon project that I devised in my naive little brain. It is soon to be my nephew’s first birthday so wanted to make him something instead of just buying him a toy. On his pram he has an array of safari animals that all make random jingly noises, but no giraffe, so I decided to try and make him a gangly but gorgeous creature to go in his zoo. I sketched out the pattern pieces then cut them out on yellow gingham fabric, as well as little orange felt ears. I opted to plait the tail using orange and yellow wool, which turned out to be the easiest bit. I first handstitched all the legs, which was fine, until I realised I had sewn them right and wrong sides together π¦ Because it had taken so long to handstitch them and Id sewn so close to the edge, the fabric had frayed so much that I had to cut out all the fabric again. I gave up and got whizzy out to sew the limb parts properly. I sewed round all the edges bar the top one, ready to stuff and then slip stitch to finish. They looked ok so I was quite relieved, but decided to hand stitch the actual body because my lack of confidence on the machine will probably mean Id mess the curves up. I back stitched an orange smiley face and sewed on two buttons as eyes before assembling it, as well as the ears. I didn’t learn from my mistake with the legs and sewed to close to the edges, making them fray and ended up recutting fabric. Fortunately a few hours later and several mistakes on, it became plain sailing. The body was fairly easy to sew together, adding the tail near the end and stuffing it so was nice and squishy. I sewed buttons onto the legs before attaching them to the body to continue the orangey yellow theme. I shouldn’t worry too much about perfection anyway because normally little ones are not harsh critics and it will be covered in slobber from a teething cutiepie very soon π
Any story which begins with ‘planned’ and ‘simple’ in the same sentence will generally be anything but! Excellent finished product though, it looks amazing!
Too right!
I have definitely learnt from my ‘simple’ plan hehe π
Awww it’s cuuuute!
Thank you! π
So nice giraffe, Its like TILDA DOLL. Toys made at home are the best!!!!
Ive never seen a TILDA doll before, but just looked them up and they are great! Thank you for such a kind comment and I totally agree, home made is best π
He’s so cute!!! I love his face! (|o: You did such a wonderful job!
hehe thank you, I tried to make him look smilier than I was making him! π
brilliant, cute and educational (also to the maker) that’s what toys should be … but most of all made with love and unique – there isn’t another one like this anywhere in the world! π
aw thank you, what a lovely thing to say. Certainly it being unique was a strong motive π
So cute! Love it
Thank you very much π
What a cute, sweet giraffe!! I hope it gets snuggled and carried around for many years =).
If you get the urge to sew up another stuffed animal, the Purl Bee website has a freebie pattern of a frog, which I found fairly easy to sew (I have a love-hate relationship with sewing, lol). I opted to leave the beads-for-eyes off because of the potential choking hazard, but the frog turned out plenty cute without the beads. I’m not including a direct link to the pattern, in case that might cause my comment to be bumped into your spam folder, but if you go to purlbee dot com and then go to their search box and type in “purl frog pattern”, there’s a link within the blog post for the PDF pattern.
oh wow, it looks so cute! Thank you so much for directing me to it, I really appreciate it. This was the first toy Id ever sewn so I am keen to have easier patterns. Will give it a go soon π