Shut Up and Sew: Like Daddy's Truck, But More Snuggly

A few weeks ago I realized that as soon as I found out the sex of our new baby, that I would be diving headfirst into making little baby things and nursery things. I decided that I wanted to focus on making a little something for my son before my attention was divided, and with Valentines Day on it's way, I'd have the perfect excuse.

I had big ambitions for a few felt projects that I was going to tackle before Christmas and never got around to, so I had lots of unused felt to play with. I decided to make something snuggly for my son, and since he is 2, his favorite types of things right now are trucks, trains and doing whatever his dad is doing. So I decided to make him a miniature snuggly version of his dad's truck.

I found an adorable tutorial over at Make It and Love It, which you can find here.

Her tutorial calls for a long strip of felt (34 inches) which I didn't have, but I did have three 12 inch rectangles of fabric. I decided to make the best of it, sew them together and hope that it wouldn't turn out too wonky looking. Hopefully it didn't. (Be gentle if you disagree.)

I made a little pattern from some scrap paper, cut out my shapes, and used those to cut out my felt.

I then sat down at the sewing machine and took a big breath. Ashley's tutorial is written clearly, but the item to be sewed actually takes shape as it is being sewn at the machine. Some of the other tutorials I've tried mostly because I looked at the pictures and thought, "Well, that looks easy enough." This project looked a bit daunting to me. But the end result was so cute and I knew my son would love it, so I pushed on.

I sat down with this (above), and eventually it started to look like this (below).

My finished, pre-stuffed truck.

I then followed Ashley's amazing tips on cutting corners and curves, which you must read here. SO so helpful, and made a big difference in getting the outer corners to poke out a bit more and gave me some slack at the inner corners. I then flipped the truck it right side out, stuffed it, and admired it. I showed it to my husband and we both smiled at it. I may have snuggled it a little bit - It's quite the snuggly truck!

I was very pleased to see that the lines from my sewing 3 pieces of felt together fell in places that were kind of appropriate for a truck body to have horizontal lines running across it. Such as, across the top of the "windshield" area, or near the back of the "truck bed." We'll just pretend that I planned it that way.

I traced a small cup on black felt for the wheels, pinned the center and sewed these on the sewing machine.

I cut them out, flipped them inside out and they were ready to be stuffed.

After I stuffed and stitched up the tires, I sewed them onto the body of the truck, but they were still a bit too wiggly for my liking. So I added a few lines of fabric glue between the wheels and the truck body to make sure that the tires were standing upright.

Since my truck is being modeled after my husband's truck, I went for a full windshield and played around with the truck's face a little bit. But in the end I just couldn't resist giving him a grill nose, smile and headlight eyes! It was just so cute!

I finished it off with some taillights and a fun little license plate which I painted on with fabric glue.

My son loved it. We set it on the table so that it could sit with him while he ate, and he smiled at it as he munched on his carrots.

If you like this truck at all than you need to try the tutorial! It was easier than I had anticipated, and you can't beat the price of the materials. (Felt is just SO wonderfully inexpensive!!!)

I'll be linking to these great parties. Have a great week!