Penguins

Over the weekend, David's mom and I made penguins! They're about nine inches tall and are supposed to stand up by themselves (her does, mine has some trouble). We found the tutorial here per David's suggestion. Even though the pattern makes 3 penguins, we each only made 1 because they're a little tedious (especially with all the hand sewing) and I didn't bring enough yellow felt. For once, we actually understood the instructions the first time but we did make a few adjustments. For instance, we sewed the wings on individually instead of at the same time. When we tried it at the same time, the penguin got too squished and it looked funny. We also used yellow floss on the feet instead of black floss because we thought this looked better.

The sewing on the machine and the assembling the penguins was actually fun and really not as bad as I thought it would be (although when you are sewing the tummy on, be sure to not sew through the whole thing or you'll get the other side caught in it too) but the hand sewing was a bit much for me. I don't mind hand sewing usually but this was thick stuff (since everything was stuffed) and harder to do. I even split a seam (or rather, David did) when trying to stuff the wings. One of the harder parts was turning out the little pieces like the beak.

Here is how mine turned out.

The under wings are the same fabric was the tummy. It's kind of hard to see that in the picture. So as you can see, he stands by himself but not very well. I think it's because I didn't stuff him as much as was suggested. He also kind of lost his tail when I stitched it poorly and I think that would help with his balance. Isn't he cute though?