Guest Post: Fabric Frog Tutorial

Today's guest post comes from Trixi of Coloured Buttons. Trixi lives in Sidney, Australia, and has been teaching craft and sewing to kids for the past 19 years. She loves swimming in the ocean, collecting shells and sea glass (and a million other things), hand quilting, beading, wandering through flea markets, designing sewing projects for kids and exploring the amazing range of craft blogs on the internet.

If you're wondering who this little fellow is...well, I call him "Froggy" (for obvious reasons)...he comes from way back in the days of "the Golden Oldies" (here & here) when I first started my sewing classes for kids.

Froggy popped into my mind again when my son Saul, who lives in Hong Kong and recently moved to a village house, e-mailed some photos of this tiny tiny little frog he found hopping around his backyard:
I guess these frogs grow a fair bit...Saul tells me that between the all-night croaking parties of the frogs, and the wailing of lone dogs he's not exactly getting all his beauty sleep...so now I've got my own little frog jumping around the garden...and I'm introducing him in this mini-tutorial.

Here is the template for Froggy.

Some brief pointers:

1) Trace around the template...sew leaving a gap for turning...it should look something like this:


2) Now trim...and turn right side out.

3) Fill Froggy with about one and a half cups of rice...pin the gap closed...and sew.

4) Remember...Froggy needs to be sewn with a small running stitch or back stitch so that the rice doesn't "leak" out.

5) In classes I only make Froggy with my "experienced sewers" as his curves can be a bit tricky to sew, especially around the little webbed fingers...so if you're making this with your kids and want to simplify his curves you can round out his hands as shown by the dotted line in the template.

6) The girls in my classes love to dress Froggy up..tutu-like skirts from lace, beaded bracelets, little knitted scarves, necklaces, bows/ribbons, etc...as you can see, Froggy usually ends up as a girl...my Froggy, however, is a boy...and here's one last photo of him lounging around the garden and taking in the winter sun:


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Visit Trixi's blog Coloured Buttons for lots of other cute tutorials and project ideas, including this adorable tiny travelling dolls house.

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