Favourite Furry Friends

At Christmas time my friend, K, who moved away to England, was able to visit for the first time in two years. Last time we saw her it was Christmas of 2019 and she had a 4 month old baby. This time she was coming back into the country with a 2 year old.

My friend, B, and I knew we wanted to make her son something, but weren't quite sure what. We knew it couldn't be too big, as she had to be able to fly home with whatever it was. And we wanted it to be appealing to a 2 year old :).

We landed on finger puppets as something not too hard for us to make, small enough to pack into a suitcase, and even possible entertainment for the flight home.

We started by looking around online for ideas and then drawing out our samples. We definitely liked different elements from different things we saw online so there was a lot of "well we like the nose from this one, but the teeth on this one".

We had narrowed down our list of animals to Canadian animals so we could remind our friend's son of his heritage :D. 

We pulled out the felt we already owned, but also had to buy some. I have a lovely assortment of rainbow colours of felt. Do you know what doesn't involve a lot of rainbow colours...Canadian animals. In fact, we had to carefully pick and plan our browns so that we didn't end up with a bunch of finger puppets that basically looked identical.

We also hand stitched all of the pieces - with pieces that small it was just easier. Plus the embroidery floss for stitching was a really cute look. We seemed to have the uncanny ability to run out of thread about an inch before the end, no matter how long the thread we started with was.

Top left to bottom right we made an orca, a moose, a bear (I don't know if we ever decided whether it was a grizzly or a black bear), a beaver, a polar bear, and a raccoon.

We also made a bag for them that was a Canadian flag. We made a cotton pouch for the interior, so the puppets won't stick to it, and then surrounded it by felt.

We didn't do a great job of documenting, so I don't have pictures of the back of the beaver or the raccoon. The tails on the beaver and the racoon definitely took the longest. We stitched a crosshatch onto the beavers tail, but also planned it out so that enough of the design was sticking out the side. The pieces of the raccoon tail were small enough that having things to stitch through, and not shifting their shape, was difficult.

The orca was definitely my friend B's favourite one. She worked very hard on the design and construction of it. We did it in profile and so made it double-sided. We also stitched it so the flipper isn't stuck down - definitely our most intricate one.

Overall we were very happy with how they came together, and they seemed well received by the recipient. We might have to start thinking about whether there are other Canadian animals that could be added to the collection at a later date.