Making Catnip Toy Popcorn

 

This picture shows the idea I followed when I made my catnip filled Popcorn for the PurrTosa store.  You take white felt, cut a wavy edged circle about 2 1/2 to 3" across, do a gather stitch around the edge about 1/4" up from the edge itself, add a little bit of stuffing wrapped around some catnip, stick a small piece of yellow or orange (or black for those not fully popped kernels) in, then pull the gather stitch tight. Take a few stitches to make sure it's locked in place, then go on to make the next one.

 

I was selling them first in bags of 10, but reduced it down to a bag of 6 or 7.  It takes a while to do a whole handful of these, and they're not very cost efficient, but they look nice.  I often look at images of 'felt food' online to see what's new.

Working More With Felt

I'd put off working with felt for a long time since it seemed too flimsy and, frankly, too 'cheap craft project' stuff.  It also didn't hold up well with cat claws for cat toys, but lately I've found it does have some good uses, especially the thicker types of felt.

My baby griffens needed wings that would be stiffer than polar fleece allowed.  I tried felt doubled up, sewn as a range of feathers on one piece, and added a counter sewn color at the base. When the base was stuffed they stood up perfectly.  I think I'm going to be making more use of felt in the future.  It's still decently priced by the yard (I refuse to buy those squares) and comes in a range of color.

The Flying Squirrels Were A Hit

They ended up being a real hit at the Bristol Renaissance Festival, both as cat toys and as something to pin to a hat or shoulder.  Neat!  I guess it didn't matter if they had catnip in them or not.

I did find a reddish thick plush 'wolf' fur at Hancock Fabrics two days ago and am going to make a reddish version to go with the grey version.  Half a yard of the fur will make enough tails for roughly 200 squirrels so I'm set for quite a while on that!

Those Flying Squirrels

Well, I had to redo the pattern from memory. Cut out and made one - turned into a giant squirrel!  Wow, time to downsize!  I redid it and came up with something a lot closer to what I wanted. 

 

It's basically two squares about 4" per side, one square in a dark gray and one layer in white, with a sort of rounded end on the head side of the square.  You layer the white on the gray, start sewing up one side (leave the bottom open) and do a sort of W at the top.  The middle of the W is the head, which can be adjusted wider if need be. 

 

Clip the deeper lines at the top. Turn the item right side out, lay it down flat and sew a shallow half circle on each side (this will be the skin sailing wings on the flying squirrel, that area will lay flat when you add stuffing). 

 

Stuff the head and front 'paw' section.  Add catnip. Finish stuffing.  Cut a fake fur tail 4" long and about 3/4ths of an inch wide. I used a really plush grey fox fur that I found at Hancock Fabrics.  The tail 'made' the item!

 

Machine sew the final closing of the bottom, doing it very close to the fabric ends and centering the tail.  Polar fleece doesn't unravel, which is pretty neat. I carefully scissored the edges tighter, used a large needle to pull the stuffing into the lower 'paw' sections from the outside, then cut two black felt ears and added small eyes - about 6mm black beads.  The 8mm beads took up too much of the head area and looked the wrong size but the smaller ones were ok. 

 

They ended up really cute!  Very simple to do too. I easily did 19 of them in one hour.

When Is It A 'Long John' Donut & When Is It An Eclair?

Ok, I've tried rounding the ends and it still looks like a donut to me........

I had some requests for bakery/pastry and got a length of tan polar fleece and some dark brown felt and have been playing around with making what I thought was an éclair but which apparently is coming out like a chocolate frosted long john donut.  *sigh*

Maybe if I stuck a dab of white fleece on the end for the filling?  I looked through Google Images for ideas but still have some issues with the design.

"Frisbee" Flying Squirrel

I'd completely forgotten about making small flying squirrels during the early Pennsic years, here I'm racking my brains trying to figure out what other type of 'winged' creature I could make for the Bristol Ren Faire and an old memory came up.  YES!  Flying squirrels it is! 

I'd done them out of grey polar fleece and white fleece underbellies, with large black bead eyes and a dark tail.  I remember even putting black felt edging on the sides of the body to make them more realistic.  I've got all three colors here so it's time to get the scratch paper out and start sketching.  Heaven knows what I did with the old pattern, so I'm going to have to do these up from scratch again.

Pictures of the Bristol Ren Faire Booth

The two ladies that own Bast's Garden Menagerie put up new pictures of their booth, this is from this year (2014).  It's a tiny booth compared to a storefront you'd find in the city, but they do well at it.

 

The sleep area is in that upper turrent.  The dress belongs to the merchant on the left.  My cat toys are in the triangular shelving there on that gray counter, the stuffed toys are on the back wall, or in the case of the bats - hanging from the ceiling above the folding card table.

 

Here is the wall display.  You can sort of see my large griffens, the baby griffens, the squid and the Cthulhu dolls I've made.
 

 

Taco Cat Toy

No picture to share yet with this one.  I've made a few felt tacos as cat toys and they turned out very colorful and sort of 'life size', which is a bit too large, so they need to be sized down somewhat.

 

The taco shell is orange felt, a 4" oval or slightly larger.  The shell is folded in half, and I cut two pieces of brown polar fleece (one for each side of the taco), I slice the curled edging off of white polar fleece (usually this edging gets tossed in the garbage) and cut it into 2" sections.  Then cut two or three round red felt pieces as tomatoes, and cut wavy edged green rectangles in a light and a dark green as lettuce.  Lastly, I cut two pieces 2" by 1" of yellow felt and slice three vertical cuts in each to represent shredded cheese.

 

The assembly goes: brown, white, green, overlap red, add yellow, then alternate green color, another red, yellow, then green again, white and brown. This arches up around the curved side, you sew on the outside of the shell edging (no turning right side out!), and when you get halfway around start stuffing the taco. Sew a bit more, add more stuffing and catnip inside. Then finish the sewing line. 

 

It's all done on the machine, there's no hand sewing involved at all.  They should not be puffy huge, just nicely stuffed.

Hot Dog For Kitty!

                                

Here's my hot dog design.  I was using white and tan polar fleece, the ketchup and mustard are felt.  The 'relish' is a textured green yarn knotted and then sewn down to the bun.  And the hot dog is one of the summer seersucker fabrics JoAnn Fabrics carries, I think the brand name is Tutti Fruitty?

 

I borrowed the picture from Gail's site, I sold her a few and she got the picture up on her web page faster than I've been able to get stuff photographed.  The hot dog is normal hot dog size so the entire unit is a fairly large cat toy.

 

The only issue is that they take SO LONG to make!  It's a lot of putzing and assembly, I need to see if I can get the production time down more.