Elliot the Elephant - a Pull Toy

I'll start to apologize for my English. :/

I made Elliot the Elephant to my one year old son and he absolutely love dragging him around!

Very fun to make, when constructing toys for smaller children you can always go nuts on coloring. This time the fabric decided the color scheme - as well as Elliot's personality off course ;)

Well, lets start!

We will start to construct Elliot's body and wheels.

Trace the template of the body on the beam and saw, I used a hand saw, if you got better tools, congratulations :) But for Elliot, a handsaw is good enough.

Drill the wheels out of your plank, now we have the foundation.

First we need to drill the hole for the ears (my hole for the ears were too small in these pictures, enlarged them later)

And then we want to drill a hole through Elliot, from the trunk to the tail, we want to connect these to make it safer for small kids.

Then its time to rasp down all hard edges to make Elliot smooth.

Sand, sand, sand... you can never sand to much, just find the level that you are happy with.

I started with a sand paper 40 and then I finished of with 120. Was good enough for me :)

After sanding it's time to paint him.

When the ground color of the body has dried I sketch eyes on the body, I use a template tool to get as round eyes as possible. Fill in with permanent marker pen.

Elliot looks a little blend if he's only white so some purple dots is added to the body.

I fold a fabric 4 times and cut a little outside the template, for seam allowance.

Be sure to not sew all way around, you need a little hole to turn it inside out.

I put a little oven paper in the ears, that makes the ear rustle and my kid loves that.Hand sew the little opening and you're done with the ears!

I was a little worried how a would get the trunk and tail as safe as possible, since plastic marbles isn't ideal to swallow for small children.

I have a nylon string that is superstrong so I bead the plastic marbles upon the string.

At the last marble on the trunk, put the string on the outside and then back through the trunk, this makes a good locking function.

I then use a metal wire to be able to pull the string through Elliot.

I do the same for the tail as for the trunk, to lock.

Then I burn the string ends so it melts together.

I pull the string a little so that the knot is hidden inside Elliots body.

I think I found a good solution but use this toy with adult supervision for safety reasons.

I used a safety pin to pull the ears through the head. I wanted the hole to be very slim since we don't want it to be easily removed.

I also used the metal wire to assist in pushing, it helped :)