Scary & Cute Zip-Monster

I decided to make some monsters that can be a nice gift for kids but are also highly appreciated by grownups. At the moment it serves as halloween decoration, but I will give it to my nephews birthday soon.

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All you need is:

• Fabrics in different but somehow matching colors. I took one fabric for the horns and the arms, one for the body, one for the head and one for the feet. (The fabric for the feet is actually a cut-off sock of which I can not find the other one anymore.)
• Eyes to sew on (alternatively you can also sew your own felt eyes)
• Stuffing material (I took regular stuffed animal filling at the local sewing store, but you can also use cotton which is used for cleaning makeup or even old pieces of cloth that you don't need anymore)
• A nice and big zipper (15 cm / 5.9 inches)
• Scissors
• Sewing machine
• Buttons (I took just random buttons I found in my button collection)

I did not measure all parts in advance, I just made sure they look nice together. However, as a rough guideline here are the approximate measures (remember that you always need two of eacha piece, except for the feet and the mouth!):

• Horns: out of a square of 7 x 7 cm (2.7 x 2.7 inch) x 2
• Arms: out of a square of 7 x 7 cm (2.7 x 2.7 inch) x 2
• Body: approx. 21 x 26 cm (8.3 x 10.2 inch) x 2
• Head: out of a rectangle of approx. 21 x 15 cm (8.3 x 5.9 inch) x 2
• Feet: old sock cut a little behind the toes
• Inside of the mouth: 21 x 21 cm (8.3 x 8.3 inch)

Once all pieces are cut, you can start sewing the extremities together (see next step).

1. Put always two identical pieces on each other and sew around the outer shape.
2. Leave the back side open for later stuffing
3. Special for the feet: sew two lines in the middle of the sock and then cut it in the middle. This gives you two feet with only two sewing lines.
4. Invert all the extremities
5. Stuff them with your stuffing material.
6. Put them aside, you will need them later

The mouth is probably the most difficult part of this monster. Since it has a zipper to open its mouth, you need to sew the inside of the mouth too, otherwise the stuffing would appear when opening it. The last three images of this step show how it should look like afterwards. Maybe you could combine the two first steps into one, but I prefer to keep it step by step and as simple as possible.

1. Sew the mouth piece to the zipper:
   • Take a zipper sewing foot and sew one side of the fabric to the backside of the zipper.
   • Take the other side of the fabric and sew it to the other side of the zipper -> create a tunnel. To make sure you don't accidently sew two sides of the mouth together, you need to open the zipper for most of the line and close it at the very end and then sew from the other side the rest. It's a bit tricky in the beginning but it does not need to be perfect, the seam will not be visible afterwards.
2. Sew the front part of the body and the front part of the head to the zipper:
   • Now take the front head part and pin it to the zipper (the zipper is underneath the dark red piece, so one can sew like this and later won't see the seam.
   • Do the same with the front body part.
   • Be careful not to sew into the mouth piece!
3. Check if the mouth can be zipped open and is not sewed to the rest (see the last three images of this step)

Now that the hardest part is over, you can sew the backside and the eyes of the monster.

1. Sew the back of the head and the back of the body together
2. Position the eyes onto the frontside of the monster, pin them and sew carefully along the black like of the eyes. I took a very narrow zig-zag stitch for this, to be suret the eyes are really fixated.

Now its time for the big step: Sewing everything together.

1. Put the front and the backside on top of each other, nice side facing inwards.
2. Take the stuffed extremities and lay them to the positions you want them to be. (Remember to not put them too close to the side, because the seam will take approximately 1 cm of space).
3. IMPORTANT: The extremities need to point inwards and should not be visible once the whole thing is pinned together.
4. Sew around the whole monster and leave a small opening to invert it later.

• Invert your monster, stuff it (rather put a bit more stuffing, it ususally flattens down after a while) and sew the last piece by hand.
• Decorate the monster with the last extras (buttons in my case, but you could also make it a scarf or a belt, ...)
• Enjoy playing!