Recycle an old sweater and make something cute!
An easy 10 step tutorial for making a softie.
1. Find an old sweater to recycle (or you can use any other fabrics you wish). I used a nice wool sweater that got shrunk too many times in the dryer.
2. Place your the template of your softie on top of sweater (make sure you flip the sweater inside out so that the good side is on the inside) and outline the template with a fabric pen or marker.
3. After the outline has been traced, pin the top and bottom parts of the sweater together.
4. With a sewing machine, sew around the marked outline, but leave about 1 or 2 inches of the outline unsewn (this is important or you won’t be able to flip your softie to stuff it!). Remove pins as you sew as they are there to keep the top and bottom layers together.
*** Remember to leave an opening so that you can flip the softie inside out! ***
You can also sew by hand but the sewing machine is much faster!
5. After sewing the outline (and leaving an opening unsewn), cut around the outline leaving about a 1/2 inch seam allowance.
6. Flip your softie inside out.
7. Add any details you want before stuffing. I added some eyes, a felt nose, and hand sewn a mouth with some pink thread.
8. Stuff the softie with some polyfil. You can use a chopstick or a pen (with cap on) to stuff the hard to reach spots like the arms, legs, and ears.
9. Neatly tuck in the opening raw edges and hand sew the opening to close it off.
10. TA-DA! Now you have a cute softie!
You may also wish to make clothing for your softie which will be covered in another tutorial later…
Enjoy!
P.S. OK, so maybe I missed a step in how to create a template for the outline tracing. FYI, I hand drew the template and then folded a piece of paper in half (vertically) and then cut it out so that it is symmetrical. You can easily make any softie shape and size that you want using this method.
P.P.S. If you tried this tutorial, I would to love to see/hear about your results. I love feedback! 
