Funky Friend Puppy Dogs

This month, Island Batik joined with Funky Friends Factory for the ambassador challenge.  Pauline, the force behind Funky Friends Factory, is an Australian designer who designs the absolute cutest stuffed toy patterns.  She has so many fantastic patterns that it was hard to choose one!  Ultimately I chose Puppy Dog Pete. He's just so cute!!!  I made two puppy dogs.

Truth be told, I struggle with projects that are 3-dimensional, especially stuffed toys.  But Pauline really sets up her Funky Friend patterns up for success.  The patterns are broken down into small steps, and she has a photo tutorial for each Friend that shows in details what it should like. 

Candy Liver

Materials used in this project were given to me by Island Batik, Funky Friends Factory, Aurifil, Schmetz, Oliso, and Hobbs.

 

Violet the Purple Puppy

I did one thing different than the pattern--I really wanted the ears to have some padding and not just be fabric.  I used scraps of Hobbs fusible batting and fused it directly onto the wrong side of he ear pieces.  I cut the batting pieces without a seam allowance, so that the extra thickness wouldn't be in the seams.  I'm pleased with how that worked!  It did make turning the ears right-side out a little more difficult, but it was worth it!

ears with Hobbs fusible batting

 
Fire Monkey has named the green puppy Candy Liver. (It comes from a mis-hearing of his dad talking about cantilevers.)  His body fabric is from an older Island Batik collection Lemongrass.  I'm not sure which collection the blue contrasting fabric for the ears, nose, and tail came from, but it's the prefect compliment to the blue spots in the Lemongrass fabric.  Candy Liver's friend is Violet the Purple Puppy.  Her main fabric is Purple from the always-available Basics collection, and her nose and ear fabrics are from last year's English Lavender collection.  I stitched both puppies with schmetz n #2783 Medium Delft Blue for all the sewing machine parts, but used color specific for the hand stitching after stuffing:  Aurifil #2884 Green Yellow for  Candy Liver and Aurufil #2545 Medium Purple for Violet.  I started the puppy project with a brand new Schmetz microtex needle.

 

Violet's head in process

I have made a few Funky Friends in the past but I had one new trick this time: printing the pattern pieces onto freezer paper that can go into the printer.  My friend Kathleen of Kathleen McMusing recently mentioned these papers to me, and man, did they make the process easier!  I printed Puppy Dog Pete's pattern pieces (say that 5 times fast!) directly onto freezer paper, then used my Oliso iron to iron the pattern pieces directly onto the fabric for cutting.  So much easier than tracing!!  I still had to transfer the pattern markings, but that's not nearly as time consuming. 

I am really happy with our new puppy pals!  Thank you, Funky Friends Factory, for a pattern that made us new huggable friends!