Cat Toys – Flat and easy

As you can see it is quite a pleasure to create your own cat looking toy. To be honest it is not that hard as well for if you’ve got any textile in hand you could create a personal and therefore unique toy. You could use a sew machine or you could sew with your own hands and a single needle.

It is true that industrialization can provide us with numerous copies of a great variety of fantastic toys – soft textile, long fur, nice design, all that easy to get, minutes away from you and at a relatively low price. But what about art and uniqueness? And what about creative mind pleasure and solving problem issues that can pull us into new and special. Special is the word I was looking for.

To create something special can give you wings and energy. And it doesn’t matter weather you’re going to give that toy to a child that doesn’t understand it’s uniqueness or you’re going to keep it. The process of creating new is the one that matters.

So now what do we need to start? We need textile as we said, we need a needle, sewing cotton thread, buttons, electric sewing machine (if available), pair of scissors, some wadding and that’s about all.

What about design? Where do we start with the most intriguing part of our doll creation process? Well one way is to sit down and draw your project on a sheet of paper. That’s ok. That means we have a plan. But we can start by creating directly a model with the textile and believe me it is quite more interesting with all the mistakes that come up and the fact that mistakes turn to new ideas. Well, yes, there is going to be some material thrown away but is that a problem actually? No, usually it isn’t.

But having a sheet of paper with drawing or not we need an idea as for where exactly to start from. If we try to create the most simple model we will imagine what kinds of pieces we have to create. We know we need the body of the cat, we need the head, the tail and the legs. And that’s it – body, tail, head, four legs.

The doll you see is my first experiment and although it looks rather too simple it is actually quite sweet and nice to hug. Now sewing the pieces is rather clear to you. As shown below you can cut 8 pieces of textile for the legs and sew them in pairs, the head also two pieces and the body again two pieces and the tail again the same.

After you sew the legs, because I always start from the legs, you fill them with wadding and see if you like them. If not you create them again. Now there is this thing about liking. The estimation that we have of what we do – do I like it the way it is? Shouldn’t it be longer, or fatter, or less filled with wadding? Now – that’s part of the joy. As you can see this blue cat doll is rather flat because I didn’t put enough wadding. Now it was suppose to be like that and one of my next dolls Is rather filled quite well to try a different effect. This flat doll can bent and can sit and although I forgot to sew a tail (which is quite funny actually) is a doll you can play with. Funny as it sounds. It falls, it bents, it’s head is ruled by gravity and is always looking down at the ground and that makes it very sweet. You pick the head up and in five minutes it is looking down.

After we have finished with the legs – we have turned them upside down and we have filled them - we could sew them to the body before it is sewed or we could create the body, fill it and then sew the legs by hand with a needle hiding all that shouldn’t be seen. And after we are ready with the body and legs we can create the head and sew it by hand or carefully with the electric sewing machine to the body. Quite easy actually all that.

In the next material you could see another model I have tried.

Flat cat with drawing

As you can see this is another model I have tried and it is again rather flat. That means that I have used little wadding to fill it. The doll is made of two pieces sewed on an electric machine together and then filled from a small hole left on the head. After filling the hole on the head it is sewed by hand.

Now what is special about this little one is that the front side is made of hard unstretchable textile and the back side is made of soft stretchable textile. The reason is complicated. First because of the turning upside down of the sewed material. Because the doll is quite small – not more that 10 cm height – the front viewable side is after the sewing inside and when you try to turn this around it doesn’t go as smooth as you would like it to. So when you put a stretchable textile that turning process goes more easily. But if you put stretch textile on both sides of the doll it will be ( it depends of course of the stretch material) too stretchy. It will not stand the way you want it to, but rather it will stand at the way the stretch material allows it to. And that’s the reason why I have put on the front side a material that will not stretch and will keep the doll just the way I want it to be.

So that’s about all concerning the front and back side of the doll. – one side soft material, the other side harder material. That’s it.

There is another thing about the two materials and it has to do with variety. One textile doll is pretty but combinations of textile – that’s even more interesting and can give you various esthetics. You could mix different tones of one color, different colors and so on. It’s fun.

But what about the painting? Water paint will not do, because simply if you would like to wash the doll it will end up looking like hell with no eyes and nothing of what you meant it to be. So you should use textile paint if you could find such. But textile paint must be ironed i think and that is a little bit, just a little bit of a problem. It’s not impossible but there are easier ways like acrylic paint. After you place the paint on the textile ready doll you just wait and when it is dry it is ready. It will not melt in to water, it will not fall – it’s even irremovable i think when it is dry. So be careful when you paint or what the hell – free your imagination!

So that’s about all of this little cat like doll. I’m sure you can make it more pretty.

Christmas cat doll

And what about this little fellow here! Now this doll is again rather flat like the former one. It is made again with two materials but this time the back material has turned in to the feet and is viewable in the front side as well. That is made by simply sewing a piece to the front side and then is sew as shown below.

It is rather simple this one. Now here we have a perfect Christmas toy and you can make it red, and green and yellow and you could paint it with acrylic paint and you could put ribbon on it and you can create many and give them to friends as a Christmas “best wishes” presents. Small and cute, most importantly made by your hands and unique due to color combination and form, because you could easily change the form.

Now here I used buttons for eyes and instead of sewing them i used silicon glue. You can find silicon glue in most building materials shop. You need a silicon pistol and a silicon stick. It’s simple, It’s safe but do not let children play with it if you are not around because it gets hot and they could make a big big trouble out of it if not watched.

So that’s about it with this little fellow here, I wish you pleasant moments with it.

Big blue cat

As you can see I definitely prefer the blue colors for all my cats are blue. No, I have a yellow one but I don’t have a picture of it. So this is maybe my favorite cat doll because it is so soft and so pleasant to touch and it was fun creating it. And it has a mouse fellow and they sit together on the couch and they really look like friends made out of similar materials. The mouse is brown.

So what about this one. I used more wadding to fill it. The model is similar to the first one I told you about and let’s see what is different. As a first i took two textile materials – one for detail – ears, mouth area and feet and the other textile for the whole body. The legs are a little more complicated but are actually very easy to make. You can see how i made it on the images below.

All the segments were prepared, filled and then sewed together by hand. The eyes are buttons, this time not glued, but sewed. And another difference is that this time I did not forget the tail, because a tailless cat looks a little bit sad. And I was happy that day and the cat got to have a tail. And that’s about all I can tell you of the big blue cat on my couch.

But you can create millions of different models and free your imagination due to shape and color, decorations and drawing. Imagine all the possibilities there are and just start. See where your mind will take you. Whether it is going to be the biggest cat you’ve seen or a tiny little one or it is going to be angry or look sad – imagine all the options available and leave that industrialization of thinking to people who can not free their minds and produce something new themselves.

Whatever doll you create – you did it and it is great!