The Owl and The Pussycat Craft

Making toys out of gloves is a great craft for the beginner sewer. Usually there is no cutting of the glove involved, which means no fraying if things are not sewn as neatly as they could be. Also, you can usually choose to glue on some of the details, making the sewing portion of the craft a little bit easier for the beginner.

Of course it is a great addition to our latest “Nursery Rhyme” series (well I think so!!!!).

Here we have a cute ‘Owl and the pussycat that went to sea in a beautiful pea green boat’!

Materials: per toy, one old glove per toy, buttons, felt, a little stuffing, needle & thread

Both the owl and the pussycat start off the same way.

1)      Turn your glove inside out. Sew across the fingers as indicated on the diagram – the little finger and the index finger will become the ears.

2)      Turn your glove back the right way round and ‘pull out’ the ears. This may take a little fiddling. And yes, it may sound “incredible”, but you WILL be left with a great little ear shape and no funny fingers poking around.

3)      Stuff your glove. You can shape your toy whilst you are stuffing and neaten out any unevenness.

4)      For the owl: depending on the size of your glove, you may have to tuck in a little of the wrist cuff and sew it shut. Before doing so, cut out some owl’s feet out of your felt, and sew these into your seam as you go along.

For the cat:  don’t tuck the wrist cuff in, just sew it shut. To shape the head:  Create a running stitch just below where you want your cat’s head to be.  Pull the stitch tight to gather the fabric and shape the head. Alternatively, you could use an elastic band, and then hide the elastic with the cat’s ribbon.

 

Running stitch

5)      Embellishments: Now, make your owl an owl by adding big bright eyes, a beak and some wings. Here they are all sewn on (securing the eyes with the buttons, the beak with stitches across the top and the wings with a short running stitch). You can however, glue these all on with PVA glue (except the buttons, use round pieces of felt instead). The cat on the other hand has all the details glued on. So you can see that either works.

Dig out your old nursery rhyme and put on a little show.

This craft in an excerpt of my Kids’ Craft Book – Red Ted Art, Cute & Easy Crafts for Kids:

Here is the full poem:

The Owl and the Pussy-cat by Edward Lear: