Today I finished the elephant I started yesterday from “Sock and Glove“. These things actually look a lot better in person than they do in the book. Johanna seized it immediately. She has been on a real elephant kick lately since she figured out how to make an elephant noise and makes it whenever she sees one. I got the socks from Goodwill Outlet for the purpose of making a stuffed animal out of them. They looked pretty awful–they were all fuzzed up, but I de-fuzzed them and a very pretty pattern came out. I think the pattern is perfect for an elephant. These are the socks post-defuzzing and pre-cutting.
Seeing as how this is one of my first sewn stuffed animals (aside from a few faux fur teddy bears I made in High School), I think it turned out pretty well, especially considering I am usually kind of hand sewing challenged. I thought that working with the stretchy, fraying socks would be difficult, but it was actually much easier to work with a stretchy fabric than a stiff one like cotton because it is easy to make things line up, blend in, and if you make a slight mistake, it is easy to fudge with. He is also smaller than I was expecting, but I guess I used a small pair of socks, so that makes sense.
I almost bought this book in Japanese before I saw that it was out in English and I am glad I got the English version–the illustrations are adequate, but I almost got stuck in a few places. I guess I will be keeping my eyes out for more socks to make animals from. I still have a couple more pairs upstairs I should take a closer look at and think about what kind of animal would look good in them.
Instead of trying to embroider the eyes, I just used some vintage buttons from my Mom’s button box.
