Stuffed Fish Toy

This week's story begins with a fish.  A rather annoying fish, actually, since it has the habit of diving for the rocks anytime a camera comes near.  However, the flame angelfish is one of the more colorful inhabitants of Micronesian coral reefs and I thought it would make a fun project to make a stuffed child's toy that resembles this fish.  My friends do have children now and then, and some of them will even recognize this fish.  The idea is to make all of the ornamentation on the toy with embroidery.  That way, there's nothing that can come off, or be chewed off and harm a child.  Using polyester fleece and polyester fiberfil, it's also possible to construct a toy that will withstand many trips through the laundry, which is definitely a necessity when it comes to small children.

I started this project with a photograph.  I took this picture in the fish's native habitat.  (OK, so I have hobbies other than sewing, like underwater photography and scuba diving.)  It took a long time to find a sort of cooperative fish, but I have a lot of patience. 

I loaded the photograph as a background into the Floriani Total Control embroidery design software.  Then I used design tools to create the irregular black bars, eyes, and fins.  Only three colors were used -- black, purple, and golden yellow. The design was sized so that it just fit in the Bernina jumbo hoop. 

I used Floriani Heat N Sta as the stabilizer for the fleece.  It has some stretch, so a stabilizer than adheres to the back of the fabric is very helpful in getting a good result.  The really nice thing about this product is that that it is a bit like an iron-in interfacing.  It gets sticky when hot, but doesn't gunk up the needles when sewing.  After sewing, it can be just torn away.   As before, I put a layer of cheap tear away stabilizer behind it, just to get a piece big enough to hoop, and then sewed together all of the layers.

It took a while to make all the black bars, but the jumbo hoop and stabilizers held the project steady.

Once the embroidery was complete, I has two fish, each a mirror reverse of the other.  A line of stitching indicates the seamline to sew together the two halves of the fish.

Cutting out the pieces, sewing them together, and then stuffing it was easy.  Now I have a very unique stuffed fish!  There's other fish that might work well for this same kind of project.

Maybe the clown trigger is a good candidate?

Come back next week for more fun adventures with a sewing machine.  See how I tackle the problem of the winter wardrobe!

AAA