Gift Idea: Plushies

As per usual I'm more poor than ever around the holidays, but I do enjoy giving people gifts, and not just any gifts, but ones they will enjoy. My friends Gloria and Shannon are known for being some of the best gift givers in our group and I always fret about their gifts.

What can I give them that they'll love? What can I afford to give them?

So I decided to make them something.

The decision to make Gloria a penguin came to me rather easy. She loves penguins and has many of them dotted around her apartment. I have some bright blue fabric that I thought would look adorable over the basic black.

I named it Bijou and didn't have much of a design for it other than that I wanted it to have a pointed little tail.
Which of course you can't see in either of these pictures.

Shannons gift was much harder, we share a love of Nightmare Before Christmas so every year I try to get him something from the movie. I finally settled on making him a Jack Skellington plush, and then promptly freaked out because that is a complicated toy.



I made the head and body first. The head took some doing, I wanted it to be rounder but it didn't look right. so I went with a flatter face.

The legs and the arms came next, they were skinny, and it's difficult to tell but one side of the body is longer than the other. After the legs were in place I made the shoes and glued them on his feet. They're made out of the same felt as his bow tie and face. After that I was out of black felt.


It took me a few week to work up the nerve to go through my excess fabric and finally find a black spandex remnant that I could use. Lots of hard work followed after that to sew in all the pinstripes and attach the tiny little sleeves to the jacket. It was frustrating, but I love how in turned out. Maybe next year I'll make him a Sally.