Sonic the Hedgehog

Last Christmas, when we drew names within my family for gift giving, I drew my sister's name. Surprise! I have made her so many things, why not one more :) I wanted to make her something one of a kind, and I searched the internet for a long time looking for just the right pattern. I finally found it here: Silver Seams- That link takes you to a free plush hedgehog pattern! Looked easy enough, but I had never made a stuffed animal before, so I started with some muslin. It was a good thing I did, because it turned out absolutely horrible! It took me forever to figure out how to sew the pattern pieces together. Sewing 3-D creatures is a lot harder than it looks! After fiddling with the pattern and making three more deformed muslin hedge-things, I was brave enough to start on the real thing. I used some white faux fur fabric that I had gotten off Freecycle (I have received lots of great fabric from Freecycle!) for the tummy, arms, legs, and face.
I used neon green fleece for the back.
I hand cut little felt hands and feet:

I used felt for the nose, embroidered the mouth, and used safety eyes for the first time!
I trimmed the fur around the face to make it a more defined area.


Now for the hard part. Little did I know that they actually HAVE long, bright blue fun fur fabric. I almost died in the store when I saw it a week after Sonic was finished. I have a knack for always choosing the hard way, though! Instead, I went to Ben Franklin and found some bundles of bright blue eyelash yarn with specks of pink and neon green. Perfect! I bought three. They were normally $10 apiece, but I found them on sale for $2 on clearance.

I made the furry back by wrapping the yarn around 2 fingers about 10 times, cutting, tying the center, and sewing onto the hedgehog.
Repeat hundreds of times. Run to the store to buy SIX more bundles of the yarn.
Get cramps in your hands.
Slowly grow to hate the hedgehog, as you work on it for hours and hours and only seem to get an inch of work done.

And then one day, he was done! I used the *very last inch* of all that yarn I bought to cover the last bald spot on the hedgehogs butt. I was tricking myself thinking he was done, however. Next, I had to cut all the loops so the yarn would stick up like soft spikes. There were lots of loops. After that, I had to give him a haircut so he could see. That created a pile of blue fur on the carpet about 5 inches high, which got the attention of K's potential mess radar. He ran through the pile before I could stop him and now, months later, I am still finding blue fur in weird places.

I am just glad I got him done before Christmas (barely). Sis gave him the name Sonic, since he's blue, and he has had a happy life ever since.