Liberty Pants Panda Tutorial

Who wants to make a panda?!
Not just any old panda, but one of these pandas wearing really cool Liberty pants ?!

Remember Sunshine and Sweetie up there? I did promise you a couple of months back that I would do a tute and here it is!

Please assemble:

Black and white felt plus a tiny scrap of contrasting colour (for the heart)
Small amount of Liberty Tana lawn (or some of the new Lifestyle cotton when it comes out!)
Black thread and black perle cotton 8 (or floss)
Glue stick
Toy filling
8" piece of ribbon
The usual - scissors (small, sharp ones are best for fiddly cutting), needles and pins.

Now download the pattern PDF and print it.

Cut out your pattern pieces, pin to appropriate felt and fabric and cut out.

Place one of your white panda bodies on to the wrong side of your Liberty pants piece as above. Run your glue stick around the fabric.

Fold over and gently stick this to the panda's body, evenly gathering it around. Repeat this with your other felt body and pants pieces.

Pin your panda belt over the raw edge of Liberty fabric. It should be just below the half way point on the body, leaving more room for face than bottom.

Using black thread, sew small over stitches along top and bottom of belt to attach to body. Repeat with other panda body.

Pin the 2 panda bodies wrong sides together, matching belt on both sides. Slip the feet, hands and ears into the appropriate spaces between the bodies and pin. You may need to trim the straight side of the ears about a quarter of an inch to get correct 'ear appearance'. Fold ribbon in half and insert into seam as well.

Using perle cotton and starting at one side of the head, sew around body close to the edge (but not so close that you tear the felt) using neat running stitches made in 2 parts. In other words don't gather a few stitches on to your needle the way you would if you were hand quilting, send your needle down with stroke and up with the next. This is to ensure that the back stitches look as neat as the front.

 Stop sewing once you get beyond the last hand, leaving a gap for stuffing.

 Stuff gently with toy filling, taking care not to stretch the felt at the gap.

 When you are happy with panda's cuddliness sew up gap and fasten off.

 Draw on face using top photos as a guide (though try to give your panda a personality of his own!)

Back stitch around inner and outer eyes and around nose and mouth. Fill inner eyes and nose with satin stitch.

Lastly, stitch you panda's heart decoration on using tiny over stitches and matching thread.
Give your new friend a big smile because he's so cute!!

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and found it useful. You are welcome to use this to make as many pandas as you like, but please be courteous and credit me and also link to this blog where possible. Thank you!

The pandas were part of a new class I developed to make handmade party favours. I talked about this here. The 'boys' favour was a felt robot. I gave this class on Sunday (hence the photos for this tute) and also managed to make this Rainbow Robot for an extra demo. I though you might like to see him too.
It was a very fun class, I could hardly call it work!!

Liberty Pandas and the Robot

I think that has to be the weirdest post title this blog has ever had! It sounds like a new show on CBeebies!
Let me explain...
As I was saying in my last post, I have been planning lots of new classes for the Summer and Autumn, and one of them is called Handmade Party Bags.

I do a bit of market research at each class, asking my students for ideas for other classes they would like me to offer, and a few young mums had wanted ideas for handmade party bag favours. They were all fed up with the cheap plastic tat you usually get and wanted to make something worthwhile to give away at their children's parties.

So meet my Liberty Pandas. This one is Sunshine, and the other is Sweetie. Obviously I have named them after the pandas at Edinburgh Zoo, which I still haven't seen! My pandas are wearing very luxurious Liberty pants. Sunshine's are made from Tana Lawn...

...and Sweetie's are made from gorgeous silk that I got as a freebie at FQ London. Unfortunately their pants are securely sewn on, so like their Zoo counterparts, they may have trouble conceiving!

I really do adore pandas (even more than owls actually), and these 2 are just so cute I can't stop looking at them! They are based on the felt animals I made for the mobile here, but with that little bit of extra detail and a hanging ribbon. They will be the girl present in the party bag (though I am reluctant to be so gender specific, I am sure lots of boys would like a cute panda with Liberty pants!).

Would you like a tutorial for the pandas?! I am on holiday next week (staycationing) and might just get one done!

And next, for the boys, meet Robot. He is more 3-dimensional than the pandas and stands on sturdy button feet. I had such fun making him! His 'controls' are press studs, buttons, beads, eyelets and a shisha mirror.
I've photographed him here in his usual hi-tech environment (a roll of aluminium foil). I got lots of ideas for him from a wonderful book called Crobots by Nelly Pailloux, which is all about crocheted robots. I plan to make a few more varieties before the class, but this one will do for the photo.
Robot doesn't have a name yet, does anything spring to mind?!

The class also features a very simple fabric party bag to put them in, but since I made this I have thought of a better way to do it so this will probably improve before the class.
The class is on Sunday 12th August and at the moment we have an Early Bird Offer on class bookings, 15% off all bookings made before Friday!! I know most of you live too far away but Edinburgh is a great place to come for a holiday, especially during August when the Festival is on! Check out my Summer School Classes here.

Oh and thanks for all the ideas for my next patchwork eve class, I think I have it all sorted now!