I’ve never bought a Mollie Makes magazine until now and I have no idea why I haven’t purchased one sooner. They are jam packed full of creativity, inspiration and craft ideas. This months issue really caught my eye as the Toucan Keyring Kit looked awesome. Who doesn’t want a cute homemade toucan attached to your keys to brighten up your day.
So, on Saturday, whilst Shaun was glued to watching England in the World Cup, I decided to get crafty and create this fun little chap.
The Toucan Keyring Kit is available in Issue 94 of Mollie Makes and it is designed by Manuela Trani.
Inside the kit: Black, blue, coral and yellow felt, embroidery thread, gold faux leather fabric, 1 x gold coloured keyring, soft toy stuffing, 1 x sharp sewing needle.
There is everything you need! Just make sure you have a sharp pair of scissors to cut the felt.
To make this, you need to flick to page 96 in the magazine to find the handy toucan templates.
Firstly, you need to carefully cut around the templates provided.
I found it easiest to lay each shape onto the felt so there was no confusion later. These toucan body parts are really tiny!
Grab your scissors and get cutting! The sharper your scissors the better as these shapes are quite fiddly.
After about 20 minutes of trying to thread a needle, stitch the pink felt square on to the yellow beak.
Then do the same for the black piece of felt at the end of the beak.
At this stage, I went freestyle and stopped following the instructions. Threading a needle was taking me FOREVER, so I wanted to get the most out of each coloured thread. Here I stitched the golden chest and tail in yellow.
Next up was the blue thread and layered on the blue felt.
I then added the black wing and added blue stitches to the wing. The eye and pink circle thingy followed, with extra pink wing stitches (or feathers).
Oops, that extra bit of black fluff on its tail isn’t meant to be there.
I managed to irreversibly bend my needle in all the excitement but somehow it still managed to sew. The black detailing on the beak was the next stage.
In the kit, you get two pieces of black felt. The second piece is used to cut around the entire toucan outline and create its back body.
Now you need to fatten up your bird with the soft toy stuffing. It looks like my poor toucan is having major surgery. Once suitably stuffed, you can sew him back together again.
Don’t forget his feet! As you can see, I’m not the neatest at sewing but who wants a perfect toucan anyway.
Once his little feet are securely in place, sewing on the keyring with the gold fabric was quite straight forward.
Ta-da! Here is Mr. Toucan! This is a really fun little DIY project and took me about 90 minutes (approx. the entire England v Sweden game). If you fancy giving this a try yourself, why not pick up a copy of Mollie Makes and give it a go! Other than threading the needle (which drove me slightly mad) the sewing was very relaxing and I really enjoyed seeing my birdie take shape.
Have you tried making this or anything similar? Let me know in the comments. I’d love to hear from you!
My sister has got to be the hardest person to buy for in our family and as her birthday was coming up, I sent her the obligatory ‘What do you want for your birthday?’ text message. She has recently taken up sewing, so I got the reply ‘a pom-pom pin cushion please’. With no more clues given, I turned to Google for help. A quick search lead me find this little chap and I thought how absolutely brilliant is that.
Luckily, Alpacas are quite easy to get hold of these days. I managed to bag myself two Alpaca Stallions from Amazon without too much difficultly.
The Alpaca saddles are made out of felt. I brought an assorted pack of patterned orange because I get the feeling Alpaca’s like orange.
Lookin’ good there, Mr. Alpaca.
The next stage involves lots of little pom poms and Gorilla superglue.
Look at his mate waiting patiently in the background for his turn.
Now for the big pom pom. Pick you colours carefully before you superglue, that Gorilla glue is serious stuff.
Don’t forget to do both sides, you don’t want an uneven looking Alpaca.
Ta-da! Here are the finished Alpaca’s doing their pin cushion job.
Hope you enjoyed this little how-to post. Let me know what you think in the comments. Have you made anything similar? I’d love to see your creations! (Also, Happy Birthday to Vicky – I hope you like your new sewing buddies!)