Vintage Kangaroo Pattern

I made a lovely Kangaroo from a vintage pattern that turned out so cute!  Abby over at whileshenaps shared a scanned copy of this very loved and old pattern book.  I'm part of her awesome design forum on facebook where other artists and soft toy designers get to share things and bounce ideas off of each other.  It's a great group of fellow soft toy designers!

The pattern is quite small, so I enlarged it to 125% using a photocopier.  I wanted to use some thrifted camel hair fabric that I found a couple months ago and knew it would be easier to turn things in side out with a larger scale pattern.

Being such plain fabric I still wanted to have a little "fun" so added heart buttons for the joints.  I like how everything turned out except the wonky unfinished-looking foot pads. 

What I've been up to

The past 3 months I've been designing and sewing soft toys like crazy!  And when I say 3 months it hasn't been 3 solid months...the summer happened in there too which always takes me away from sewing.  Plus I grew a baby, and sewed lots of gifts for people, oh and made dinner most nights and kept a mildly tidy house.  The whole stay-at-home-mom thing and running a small business is no small feat!  As I'm sure some of you can relate.

Also, my non-advertised clothing alterations side of rachelfound has taken off this summer too.  I've had regular and return clients and friends which is awesome!  That's the bread and butter side of my business that keeps me sharp and learning new things and always sewing even if I don't feel like it.  

But the side of my business that keeps me creative and gives me the drive to keep designing is my love of making, designing and sewing soft toys.  I'm gearing up for a Christmas market, so that's what most of my inventory is being "saved" for, but I also am steadily selling toys on Etsy.

To top it all off I'm finishing 2 quilts for my kids this week (epic quilt ranting blog post to come soon!), and I had a sweet baby boy last week, and because of the for mentioned having a child, I forget what else I've been up to!

Anyways, here's a few of the soft toys I've been making: 

 Fox girl made with soft fleece and cotton

 Girl skunk made with faux fur, soft fleece and cotton

 Plaid deer made from a recycled wool sweater and a flannel shirt

 And this hilarious cow I made for a 1 year old birthday girl! (who lives on a dairy farm) the udders make me laugh so much!