Hand-Painted Moth Softies
I love the silent hour of night,
For blissful dreams may then arise,
Revealing to my charmed sight
What may not bless my waking eyes
- Anne Brontë
Hard to believe that it’s been a whole year since we shared our hand painted fish softies with you! Also hard to believe that it’s been 10 weeks since I have written a blog post. We have Trixi (aka the world’s nicest kid-friendly sewing guru) to thank for pulling me out of blogger semi-retirement.
If you are a “regular” here you already know about Sew-a-Softie. If you are new, definitely click that last link. Trixi has been spearheading this global sew-athon since 2016. We joined the party in winter of 2017 with the debut of our Fa-la-la-la Llama (also known as Llama Del Rey depending on who you ask). If you are interested in sewing with kids Trixi’s site Coloured Buttons should be your first stop. Ms. T shares tons of tips and tricks and has a wide array of free softie tutorials to meet the needs of every skill level. If you want to see this year’s line up of softies head over to the Gram. Each day a different crafty account is sharing a new softie tutorial.
Without further ado, I introduce you to our “DROP-CLOTH MOTH” softie. Yes, I love a good rhyme and YES, I love an abstract paint job and YES, splatter paint is still H’s favorite mode of art-ing.
How do you feel about moths? If you are like my girls..and my dog you are not into the “real life” version. If you are like me, you might think they are maybe just a little bit cooler than butterflies? They are nocturnal (cool) they are amazing pollinators (good peeps) there are 11,000 moth species in the united states alone. They outnumber butterflies by more than 10 to 1! Moths range in size from the tip of a pencil (micro) to the size of a bird (I am looking at you Atlas Moth). When I say moth you are probably thinking drab…hold please:
ATLAS MOTH PERCHED ON AN ADULT SIZE ARM!
So now that we have been properly introduced and dare I say a wee bit inspired? Let’s talk process. If I was doing this project with a big group I would absolutely use a white sheet or canvas drop cloth and let the littles go BIG and wild collaborative painting style. For the sake of softie and fuzzy moth we used white felt and we kept our dribbles and drops contained. If you are working with a smaller group (like the 3 of us) or if you have never painted on felt..I say give it a go. Fuzzy is fun!
Materials:
moth template(s) * see opt-in below
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print and cut out your moth templates 2. Trace your template onto your fabric (each moth shape needs to be traced twice to create a front and a back for your softie). The wings on our templates are not symmetrical so you want to make sure you flip your shape over when you trace “the back” to create a mirror image. This will ensure you paint the right side and that your front and back line up. 3. Time for some splatter and spot “drop-cloth-style” painting!
A word to the wise: painted felt takes a LONG TIME to dry. If you want a fabric that dries quickly choose canvas or duck. If you are like us and you want your moths to be fuzzy and soft plan to paint in the morning and sew in the afternoon.
Once your moths have dried it is time to cut!
Line up your front and back and start to stitch. Ri started with a running stitch and then opted to switch to a whip stitch (much faster). I forgot to get a stuffing shot but basically we stuffed in sections. The back of a paint brush, chop stick, or knitting needle works really well to push the fluff into hard to reach spots.
H was not willing to sew for this round of sew a softie (something about extreme exhaustion and summer break being a time to “hang out and chill”) but she was willing to yarn wrap. So I decided to create a separate stuffed thorax and abdomen for her to wrap.
We used a tack stitch to create an un-stuffed nook for our yarn body placement:
H is a big fan of ALL that glitters and shines so we added an opalescent pipe cleaner as antenna to our closed wing moth.
Ri wanted to skip the pipe cleaner antenna on our open wing moth so the yarn wrapped thorax+abdomen was placed just below the felt head on this one. Two different looks..we can’t decide if we have a favorite.
extreme close up because that paint job…
