Acorn needle book - redesigned

Just in time for fall, here's an update to my acorn needle book. I happened to find a little length of Japanese ribbon with squirrels on it at a sweet little shop called Polka Dot Kids. I don't have kids but for some reason... I'm not sure why... I still go into this shop anytime I'm passing by.

Often I tell myself I'd better not splurge on something just because it's adorable. But ribbon with squirrels on it? Well that's actually a logical addition to my sewing supplies. In fact, since I didn't already have ribbon with squirrels on it, I was essentially filling a gap in my supplies. You know, being practical.

So now the acorn needle book is back, with a little squirrel ribbon for a stem and quilt batting inside to give it more structure. I redesigned the shape to be more symmetrical after realizing that the front needed to match the back so that it all lines up when assembled. The acorn needle book is in my shop now, with more on the way.

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Nuigurumi style - small bear

she's fairly small, the wooden chair shows the scale

I've had the Japanese craft book nuigurumi style (ISBN 4-05-604179-2) for ages. This one is really popular so I'm sure most of you have seen it before. I've been wanting to make the bear on page 8:

Well actually I wanted to make the cat, which is what I thought it was, until about halfway through sewing it up when I was looking at the ears and thought, "hey, this is a bear.." I was oddly disappointed but then again she's still really cute.

Note the ears: round = bear, pointy = cat. I see that now.

Lots of people have made these patterns but I haven't heard any specific comments about trying to follow the patterns in Japanese. So here are my tips. The first step was cutting out the pattern pieces and the bear pieces are on the same page as the bird pictured next to her. Bradley helped me out because he noticed the character for "bear" and "bird" on the instructions page so he pointed out which pieces were for which animal.

outside doing some sketching

The bear instructions have a photo of the bear at the top so you can see you're in the right place. Then the next point is, of course, to read right to left, so just notice the numbering of each step and follow that.

daydreaming...

Along with the pieces for the body there are extra pieces for the clothes. In this case they are made up of rectangles - so there are no templates - you use the measurements given in the first column (far right) to cut out those pieces. Also the diagram shows the placement of each pattern piece on different pieces of fabric so that gives you extra clues about which piece is which but you can pretty much tell from the shapes. I couldn't find any reference to seam allowance so I cut the pieces assuming they included a seam allowance and sewed them up using 1/4" and it worked out fine.

There's a picture of a hand sewing needle on the instructions and I found that machine sewing was difficult with the small velvet pieces which shifted as I worked. So I decided to just sew the whole thing by hand and had good (albeit time consuming) results.

The little bag is my addition, as she needed somewhere to put her pencils..
p.s. Well I seem to be a regular on Apartment Therapy (this time asked by Beth). I was steeled for "how could you paint wood??" etc. but this time I got lots of nice comments. Yay!

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