I so love the kawaii food softies you see about on the web and I was wondering if I could make my own. Well, here's my attempt. I think it's a marshmallow but it could equally be a turkish delight or perhaps one of those rice-based sweets you get in Yo Sushi.
This little girl (for she has a ribbon) is made out of baby pink polar fleece. I often use felt for my little softies but I wanted a fluffier look this time. I got a whole metre of fleece for £3.99 on Ebay so have got enough to make a veritable army of marshmallows (I could quite fancy having my own marshmallow army...).
To start, I cut 6 x 3 inch squares using my trusty rotatary cutter and quilting ruler. I at least like to try to start out with everything the right size and shape.
I then machine sewed the sides together. The fleece took a little persuading to get going under my lightweight machine, but I managed. I used a quarter inch seam allowance, although this was probably variable notwithstanding I now have a quarter inch foot to guide me.
Next, I got the top of the marshmallow sewn on. I was a bit worried about this, but, as I wanted the corners to be quite round anyway, bodging it seemed to work adequately.
It was now time to do the face, which is kind of crucial for good Kawaii design. I used safety eyes for her peepholes, inserted by making a hole with sharp scissors first. The mouth took several attempts - wrong thickness of thread, wrong shape of mouth, wrong shade of thread etc. Finally, I added the bow, which is from one of the Papermania capsule collections.
I then went back to the machine to sew on the bottom, leaving a gap for turning. I tend to leave a tiny gap for turning as my hand finishing tends to be a bit dodgy. It might have been better if I had left the gap round the back. As it is, you can see a kink in the front where I handstitched the gap closed. My husband charitably says it looks like she has little feet.
The softie is stuffed with regular polyester toy filling. I could see at the end I was going to have a stability problem, so I put some plastic pellets at the bottom to level the base out. Again, a bigger gap for the stuffing would have helped. Pellets everywhere...
To finish, I glued on her pink cheeks, which are the centres of some felt flowers.
I think she's rather cute, so now for the rest of the army...
Melx
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