Sew a Character

Make your own fan art or bring an original character to life with sewing. Choose a character that's relatively simple, that will make it easier to sew together the body, head and appendages. You can add little or a lot of detail with felt or by embroidering.

We're making our friendly makerspace robot MAX for our tutorial.

• Scissors
• Felt
• Needle & Thread
• Fabric Glue
• Stuffing

Optional:

• Pipe Cleaners (instead of felt arms so you can pose them)

Draw all of your parts onto your felt. A fabric marker or permanent marker will work but both run the risk of rubbing off if you touch them right away. A pencil may work as well but can sometimes be harder to see. Cut out your parts and lay them out to make sure you have them all.

SIDE NOTE:

This is a great time to make a stop motion animation of your character.

You can check out our movie of max on our Instagram: @The_Maker_Studio

Use your fabric glue to glue on all of the details like facial features. You can also embroider on some details or draw with markers too. (Just remember most markers don't like to draw on felt so after you draw with them let them sit for a while to dry & then test them to make sure they won't rub off.)

Start sewing at the top corner moving down the body. You want to leave the top open for stuffing. When you get to where the arms (or tentacles, or wings) attach make sure to sew them onto the body. If you're using pipe cleaners you can wrap the end of the pipe cleaner into a circle and sew through that. Add on the legs & the other arm & tie off your stitches.

Add in a bit of stuffing- enough to give your character depth but not so much that you can't sew it closed.

Sew the head around all the edges but not the bottom. Add a bit of stuffing & sew it shut.

No one likes a headless character (unless it's the headless horseman) so sew on your head to the torso. A few stitches should do it, if the head just keeps falling over add a few more stitches. You can also glue a piece of scrap felt onto the back of the head and torso as support.

Your felt character is lonely, maybe you could make some friends?