The Making of a Little Ape
For those who like to see how the sausage is made, I documented the process of making my latest Little Ape, Petit Chou.
The first thing to do is pick a color. I just got a fresh shipment of fur from distinctivefabric.com and I chose the purple for this little monkey. The photos don’t do it justice at all. It’s a deep, rich purple with reddish highlights. Totally sweet.
Next, I need to pick out colors for the other parts: belly and face, eyes, nose and bellybutton:
The next step is to sew together the little bits of face and belly before I attach them to the body:
The teeth I cut for the monsters tend to be straight and uniform. Boring. So I tried to make Petit Chou’s teeth a little more irregular, like the ones I draw and paint. I ended up sewing the mouth a little wonky too, for added accidental awesome.
Next is pinning the face and belly to the body (or, at least the piece of fur that will be the body shortly).
I like to draw the final shape with the sewing machine, so I keep the face and belly large and rough-cut. This also makes it easier to sew, because I’m sewing entirely on top of fleece and the fur can’t wrap itself around the presser foot (which it desperately wants to do!).
Above the face and belly are sewn and the face is trimmed. Heart belly!
Next I put the two big fur pieces together and draw the full body shape in chalk. I finally get to see what she’ll look like!
Then I pin around the edges, pin the label in and sew it all up. This is the easiest step.
Here she is all sewn and trimmed. I usually trim the excess with scissors, but I tried an exacto knife this time and it worked great. I was able to cut just the backing fabric without cutting any fur. That way there won’t be any weird chopped-off fur pieces on the edges.
All that’s left is to flip her inside out and stuff her.
And a new little ape is born! Ain’t she a peach? Petit Chou is now available in my Etsy shop.