Customer Reviews

Toys to Sew: Dozens of Patterns for Dolls, Animals, Doll Clothes, and Accessories

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I'd forgotten how much fun it is to work with felt. The patterns & instructions in this book are easy to follow and the results are great. I made the mouse skittles (the mice are the bowling pins and the ball is a cat) and my only warning is that you will find yourself making more and more mice, just because the group looks so good. My only quibble with the book is that I wasn't able to locate the pattern for the egg (meant to hold a baby dinosaur), but I shouldn't complain. Surely we can all figure out how to cut out an egg shape.

I absolutly love the toys in this book, and so does my daughter!! With all of the lead and recall issues lately we have taken aways most of my her toys and replaced them with safer toys; many from this book. They have their own special touch like the silly high placed thumbs, big googoo eyes, and more. I made the cat and one mouse skittle and my daughter loves throwing them at me and laughing. This is a soft toy that won't hurt a fly and they are soo cute. I did add more personality to one of the mice by making her into a ballernina. I will also do a pirate one. These toys can be made so inexpensivly that I am actually able to give gifts to my nieces and nephews for Christmas. I have a hard time controlling myself!!I want to make them all!!! They are soooo cute!! The only reason I gave this a 4 instead of a 5 is that I agree with the other reviewers: the instructions and pattern pieces are lacking. If you are a beginner you will find this frustrating. With a little experience you will be able to figure out what is not told to you. There are times also that the pattern will not yield the same results as what you see in the picture. For example: the gator has pointy claws in the pic but the pattern has round blunt claws. I have learned to look over the pic well, compare the pattern and make adjustments. As far as increasing the pattern piece sizes I too found this cumbersome. I didn't drive to a print shop, but I did have to have my teenager teach me how to use the enlarging feature on my home copier/printer/scanner. So if you can enlarge pattern pieces and figure out missing instructions here and there, this book will be excellent for any parent wanting to make cute, safe toys for their children and gifts for others!! Here is a list of what you will find in the book:
1 doll/ 4 variations: pirate, ballernia, Sony Sam, fairy. Other clothes.
4 sock animals: tiger, monkey, dog, puppy.
Stuffed animals: pink elephant,gator, trutle, bear, spotted elephant
Felt toys: 4 dinos and one baby dino hatching out of an egg and bag, cat and mouse skittles (boweling), cone shapped houses.
A hobbie horse and a wooden pull toys (like a flat wagon).

This book is packed full of really cute toys to sew. However, the instructions have much to be desired if you are a beginner sewer. I've sewn toys before, so I knew what to do, but more details are needed, such as how to sew on knit fabric (for example socks are used for the cover toys -- if too short a stitch length is used, you may have stretch occurring), placement of embroidered details like eyes and nose, and how to sew on limbs so that the seams don't show. That's another issue, many of the seams are visible on these toys, which means wear of the toys may be an issue. I also would opt to put on details like the dog patch and nose after stuffing and not before, especially as the knit fabric of the socks stretches but the felt does not (nose and eyes). Fabric instructions and sizes are not clear as well.

If you are not a beginner, I think there is a great deal of inspiration in the toys in this book. They look like fun items kids will love. Okay, forget kids, I love them.

I love this book!!! The designs are so charming, creative and fun! I want to eventually make everything in it!! There is a large section about a rag doll and clothes to go with it. The sock animals are unique and playful....but the best patterns are the alligator and the turtle, they make really stunning toys. These designs seem simple enough for a beginner to do and are a really quick sew for the experienced seamstress.
Did I say, I love this book!!?!!!

The ideas in the book are beautifully photographed. The materials chosen for the projects are inspiring. But the instructions are given without illustrations, and the case of the pattern I am working with, the instructions are inaccurate and inadequate. You must figure out how to correct the errors. The images and ideas are top notch, however, the instructions make at least one toy ("Pull-Along Nellie") difficult to make. A new sewer would have a hard time solving the problem of the wrong instructions.

This book has some really fun ideas, but the directions are terrible. It is pattern-based for much of it and some of the patterns are missing, mis-labeled, or missing pieces. The directions are missing steps in many cases. I don't recommend this book unless you are good at improvising, tweaking, and creating based on a picture alone.

Since I am new to toys and have some new nieces and nephews, I bought this book because of how cute the toys are. I started with the mice and cat and they were easy and fun. My next project was the dinosaurs. Once I enlarged the patterns, I realized that patterns and the instructions don't quite match up. Being new to toys, I am finding myself at a loss on how to finish. Perhaps one more round at the editor would have made this book wonderful.

I bought this book a while back... but have yet to make anything from it! The picture on the cover was about the only neat thing I would make.

I found it to be too sloppy for my taste. If I has seen this at the bookstore, I would skip it.

The toys in this book are adorable, but the directions are SOOOOOO poorly written that it's nearly impossible to follow them and extremely frustrating! Also, in one of the toys, a piece of the pattern is completely left out of the templates section. Ugh!

I thought the doll to make inside was going to be a little different, but it's still pretty cool. I bought the book to make the doll and a bunch of clothes for my three-yr. old. The face on the doll is pretty goofy, and the head is a funny lemon-shape, but the rest of it is fab. I'm trying to decide whether to make it as is, or attempt to redesign the head a bit. I'm not the most incredible sewer out there, so I'll probably just settle for the goofy head. But there are other toys in there - the elephant is incredible, and the sock puppets from the cover are great. A really cute tea set that I've nearly finished making too...