Horsies Are A Go!

SO!
Here they are. Softies for the sinister horsie army.
No WAIT.
Softies to make the world more awesome. Yah that's better.
My sister and I shall be sewing up a batch of these fellows to sneakily give away to random strangers via The Toy Society.
If you don't know who they are you should race over and check them out. We'll wait here.
(The deal is, you make something squishy, then you leave it someplace it will be found with a label saying "TAKE ME HOME". You post your "drop" on The Toy Society flickr group and maybe, if you're lucky, the person who finds it lets you know that it has a good home.)
Which, really, what's not super lovely about that?
Want to join us? We'd love it if you would. You know, even if you happen to have a hankering for a sinister horsie army.

What you'll need is:

• A spot O' felt. wool, acrylic, recycled plastic bottle, homemade felted sweater all are good.
• Some embroidery floss (floss?) for details and a mane and tail. (I've used it for all the sewing on account of my lazy)
• Stuffing/wadding stuff.

The first thing to do is print the pattern out. To make a horsie that's 3 and a half inches or so at the shoulder you need to open it with adobe (there's a button at the top leftish), then change the print setup to landscape, then when you hit print you need to select the page scaling option fit to printable area.
Ok, got your pattern?
Good.
Cut out your felt.
Now might be a good time to add embroidery details (like a super sinister face!) or an embroidery floss mane if that's what you're doing (details on that in a bit).

1. Sew the Leggies to the one side of the body "wrong" sides facing each other. Start dead center of the front leg panel and finish dead center of the back.



2. Use a blanket stitch. Or whatever you like really.


3. Once you have one side of the body done, flip down the "loose" leggies. Sew them onto the other side of the body in exactly the same way. You don't even have to change thread. This is what you're aiming for:

4. Next, continue to stitch up the neck and around the face. Stitch the ear panel into place the same way as the legs. Stop just behind the ears. It's stuffing time!

5. Poke stuffing down into the leggies. Use a pokey implement if you need too, as you're looking for quite a solid fill. Then poke stuffing into the face and head, but not the ears.
Sew and stuff from the neck down, through the body, poking and adjusting as you go; until you reach the horse's bottom.


6. If you're going with the embroidery floss tail then you need to cut your strands at twice the length you want your tail, then tie them tightly around the middle with a spot of thread like this:

then poke the folded, tied end into the horsie's uh, "tail area". Secure it with a few extra stitches as you're closing the hole. heh. "hole".

If your horse is looking a little splay legged then ad a few more stitched towards the feeties from the tops of the leggies at the bum and chest.

Now, about that mane. Here's my own "Mane-for-sinister-horsie-army stitch" But go crazy if you can think of another method. I think it's prolly easier to see than describe, so:


this is what it should look like:


you just repeat until you have the desired amount of equine hirsuteness. You could do double rows like for a puffier "do".

And there we have it. You guys, if this isn't clear enough then PLEASE do let me know. I'm hoping that my sister and I will coordinate our international Toy Society drop off dates, so if you'd like to get in on that too, then just give me a shout.