We’re having a Winnie the Pooh craze around here. Craze may be putting it a little strongly, but Dexter is frequently Pooh, pretending to suck honey off his hand and telling me he’s spitting out bees. He asked the other day if I’d make him a piglet… so I paused for a half-second and said, “Sure!”
If you’d like to use the exact pattern* I traced out, here it is:
I’ll show below how to assemble him and how I drafted my pattern.
*1. Where the body meets the legs, use the top pink line. The lower one was a mistake I didn’t remove. *2. My pattern is not symmetrical. It just didn’t occur to me until it was too late. This will be most obvious on the ears, the inner parts need to match the correct ear, unless you care to correct that on your pattern.
You can do this with any character really. Piglet is pretty simple in that he’s almost entirely made up of 2 colors. I found a picture online, blew it up to the size I wanted, printed it… and realized it wasn’t quite as big as I’d expected. So I roughly traced around it to enlarge it.
You can see that I did a lot of correcting throughout the whole process. I was flying by the seat of my pants and really didn’t spend anytime in the planning phase! But all of these corrections should be reflected in the PDF pattern.
I folded over my felt and traced the pattern onto the side of the fabric that would be on the inside. Then I cut out both layers together.
Next, I went scrounging for fabric for clothing. I didn’t want to have to hem anything, so I used only felt and t-shirt scraps. I didn’t have any dark pink, and I felt like he just HAD to have stripes. I figured purple would work too. It’s a warmer purple than it looks in all these pictures.
So, lay Piglet down where you’d like the stripes to fall. Again, fold your fabric, with the wrong sides facing out.
I used a Sharpie to mark the points at his neck and crotch, and then traced the sides of his tummy.
You’ll get a an outline that looks like the picture on the left (if you do it without the pattern I linked). Then just connect all the lines, making a dip at the top for his chin.
Then I turned all the pieces right-side-up and started building Piglet.
Cut out all the facial features. He’s starting to look pretty cute! Also, he looks a little broader than normal, but when he’s stuffed, it turns out just right.
Sew on all the dark pieces.
Next, layer the snout.
Then add the little nose triangle.
Then sew the clothes to the front and the back. Remember, you have not put him together yet, your back piece should still be separate from the front.
Flip the sides and trim off any excess t-shirt fabric. You’ll want to check the front side after you do this and make sure you trim the parts you can’t see from the back.
Now you create your Piglet sandwich (hmm…) and sew around the outside, starting below one ear, and ending at the bottom of the next ear.
Piglet’s head should be floppy and open like this:
Stuff the arms and legs first, leaving it slightly soft where they connect to the body, so that he won’t be completely stiff. Then talk some little kid into stuffing the rest for you. Actually, he got tired of this pretty quickly and I had to finish. He just wanted to shred the stuffing.
Then I stitched across the arm joint to give them a little range of motion. I didn’t bother doing this with the legs, but you’re welcome to try if it pleases you.
Round the Polyfil at the top, keeping it clear of where seams will be. I didn’t put any stuffing in the ears.
Sew around the curve of the head, still ignoring the ears.
Pin the pink parts onto the ears. Keep in mind that if you used my pattern, the ear parts are not interchangeable.
Sew around the edge of the dark pink, both attaching it to the ear and closing the ear openings.
Then trim off the threads and he’s good to go!!
The first thing Dex did was cram him down into a jar. Poor Pickled Piglet.
And he felt like he needed to compare the pattern to see if they matched up.
He now sleeps with Piglet every night, which is awesome. I should add that felt starts to look a little ratty when it’s handled by sticky hands everyday. Just a heads up.
There are lots of steps, but this was a pretty quick project. All told, it took me about 2 hours to complete, including drafting the pattern and taking pictures.
I’d love to see if anyone comes up with any other characters! I hope to make a Winnie the Pooh sometime! But then I’d probably lose it and end up making the whole Winnie the Pooh family. Felt is dangerous!
?? Thanks so much, Amber!!
Lemonwood Clock 
