Crafty as a Moose

Moose: http://www.nickjr.com/crafts/moose-no-sew-snuggle-pillow.jhtml?path=/crafts/noggin-shows/all-themes/all-ages/index.jhtml
Zee: http://www.nickjr.com/crafts/zee-no-sew-snuggle-pillow.jhtml?path=/crafts/all-shows/seasonal/all-ages/index.jhtml

My entire plan for today was to make these little pillows Riley saw on TV and freaked out about. I enjoy crafts, but I'm no Martha Stewart by any means, in fact I really enjoy doing my own thing and I find the imperfections interesting.

For those of you who are unfamiliar, this is a clip featuring Moose A. Moose and his bird friend, Zee.

Parents from my generation know Moose's voice as Stick Stickly... Ah, memories...

I had left over felt from the hedgehog finger puppets I made for Riley's birthday:

Mike had some batting laying around from fixing the couch and I didn't want to go anywhere.
So we begun...

The first thing they don't tell you in the tips section is that not unlike those "10 minute" meals there's hours or prep work. First of all you have to do them both - their kind of like peanut butter and jelly, they go together. So that's 4 pages of templates to print, cut out of the paper and then cut out of the felt.

Still cutting, while Riley screams impatiently in the high chair beside me.

Here is a pile of Moose parts. Now, because I was working with left over felt from another project, I didn't have yellow for Moose's body. I only had brown. One piece of light brown and one piece of dark brown. I reasoned that, in the real world a moose would be brown, but I didn't have enough of either to do both sides. Also, both characters should have black and white eyes according to the directions. I didn't have black or white either, so I decided to use light brown for the whites of their eyes and blue and green for their respective pupils.

It took me a while to realize that, duh, I can fold the felt so I only had to cut the bodies, eyes, antlers, etc once. I was really worked up about things not lining up properly. When I was almost done, I realized all I had to do was trim the edges. Sigh, I swear when I had time to myself I used to do crafts all the time.

The directions tell you to let your preschooler arrange the faces, but by the time I had all the darn pieces cut out she was napping. I am not super proud of my cutting skills on the Moose. I recommend a pair of small scissors for detail work, though I was too tired to go dig them out. As you can see from the second picture, I amputated Moose's tail and had to re-attach it patchwork style. Both pillows had pieces that had to go between the layers. I borrowed a piece of stiff felt for Moose's antlers, but I forgot about Zee's feet. So the poor bird has floppy feet.

The directions talk about pressing down on those pieces for 60 seconds. I don't think that was enough I put a heavy book on top for long enough to proofread a blog post. Also, felt 101 (which I obviously slept through) dictates glue should be applied to the courser side as opposed to the soft side. This caused my pillows problems. Another tip the barcode sticker the craft store puts on is usually on the course side.

I glued the faces while Riley was napping. Sue me, I wanted to see what the pieces looked like all together after all that prep. She woke up in time to "help" stuff them and glue them closed. Here's what a 16mo old helping looks like:

Yup, that's her running away with the batting. They warn you not to over-stuff them since it will cause problems with glue. Once I scooped her on to my lap she did actually hold the glue bottle with me and squeeze. She even pressed down around the edges with me, unfortunately there was no way to take a picture of that moment of cooperation. The whole idea is that these are "no sew" pillows, but like I said, I had the felt sides wrong, so I was having sticking issues. Beyond that, I asked Riley where the eyes were and she promptly pulled them off. While it would have been the exact right thing with Mr. Potato Head, I had to hold back tears when she did it to our pillow friend.

So while Daddy gave Riley lunch, I decided to get out the needle and thread. Just so there's no confusion, those hedgehog finger puppets were my very first sewing project, I'm not exactly a member of any local quilting bees, I just wanted to at least anchor the faces. I thought lunch would give the glue time to dry, and then maybe, maybe, I wouldn't have to sew the perimeter of each. No dice.

I sewed the Moose. I wasn't pleased with how he turned out, but it's a hard and fast rule of crafts and baking that the first one you make turns out the worst. In hindsight, I wish I had stuffed them a little fuller since I was sewing them. Maybe I was being overly critical and I was disappointed in my aptitude for this project in general. I was stressed by the time Moose was done, and thinking, "why? why did I do this again? Answer:

 She LOVED him. He was perfect in her eyes. Even though it took me from 9:00am to 3:30pm to complete the first pillow I was able to sew Zee in the first 15mins of her nap. I sat around for the next 1.5hr impatiently waiting to show her Zee, who was hands-down my favorite. Ta-da!

 When I heard her waking up, I went racing to her room with Zee and a camera. She was elated! I said "Look who's here!" and Riley scooped Moose up out of her crib and held him up. Best friends reunited.

 Hurray, you're both here! I love you so much, Mwah!

 And then because Grandma didn't have a context for our friends, and just to see what Riley would do, I turned on Moose and Zee (gotta love cable on-demand). Here's my smiling, one shoed girl watching Moose and Zee on TV. She kept holding them up and laughing. It was so worth it!