FLASHBACK 2, 2010 : A Whale Softie Tutorial & Template

I found this wonderful whale softie template here. This is definitely for an intermediate softie maker because it involves darts and a bit of piecing together. But the results is a wonderful whale soft toy with a cool curved tail. You'll find that the darts actually help with the structure of the body. This has opened my eyes to adding darts for a dimensional structure. Best softie template ever! I did this in a jiffy too.

Download the template here. http://smalldreamfactory.blogspot.com/2009/04/free-pattern-softie-whale.html

I used a stash of Ikea fabrics. Love the blues and the greens.

Trace along the template. Seam allowance have been given.

To make it easier, I cut off the seam allowance after tracing so that I can trace the actual body for easy sewing later.

Cut the fabric on the seam outline. Don't forget to cut the flippers out as well.

Pin the darts together.

Sew the darts. There are 2 seams on the 'head' that has a curvature. I couldn't do that so I just went straight ahead and sew a straight line instead. Have to learn how to do that later. I would advise you to iron your darts after. I skipped that and ended with not very neat darts after piecing them altogether.

 

Sew the flippers and before inverting, snip on the edges.

Invert the flippers. Don't they look adorable!

Pin them as indicated on the template on the right side of the fabric. Thank God I used stripes, they kinda helped alot with the placing of the flippers.

After a hundred pins or so! LOL. Piecing the upper and lower body was quite challenging for me. The lines traced out from the cut body pieces really helped a lot. All you need is to align the lines together and voila! The template was very accurate, so not so much tweaking.

Sew around the body leaving the tail section open for inverting and stuffing.

Snip all around so that when you invert, the curves will be smoother.

The inverted whale. Now, Wally looked a little deflated.

Bought these eyes for softies from Artfriend for real cheap. They come in a variety of sizes and colours. I had round pieces of felt for more drama. All you do is poke a whole through the felt and punch through with the upper piece of the eye.

Mark and punch a tiny whole on the fabric where the eyes should be. Place the felt and eye ball piece and ...

...add the under cap of the eyeball in the underside. It should lock with a simple snap. This is to lock the eyeball in place, so little children will not be able to pull the whole eye out.

Wally needs some fibre!

Stuffing Wally was a breeze. Ladder stitch to close the opening.

Tada! Wally is now Nigel's bedside companion!