Make a Cute Rag Mouse

February 1, 2023

Here’s how to make an adorable rag mouse like this one:

Cut out the main head and body piece for your cloth mouse. I used a rectangle, folded in half. With right sides together, stitch around the edges, leaving one end open for stuffing.

Choose a different fabric for your arms and legs. Cut strips about the same length as your main piece, as wide as you want them, with room to spare for turning back the right way around after sewing.

Fold it in half (right sides together) and sew, leaving an open end to add stuffing.

Make another one, then turn them right side out. 😀

Then make legs. You can make long legs, the same as the arms, or little legs. Either way is fine, so do whichever you fancy. I’ve done little legs this time.

Stuff them all with kapok. If you don’t have kapok you could use old socks to stuff them, or fabric cuttings. I have done this with some of my mice, it just makes them a little bit heavier, and somewhat lumpy. When they are stuffed, sew them together! Remember that your main piece is head and body, so the arms go a little higher than half way down, depending on how big a head you want your mouse to have. 😀

Next cut out some fabric squares to make the ears. Sometimes I make very tiny ears, this time I made big ears, then I sewed them right sides together, trimmed the edges, and turned them right side out. Make two. (You probably noticed that I have used pinking shears to cut my material. You don’t have to do that but it’s good for preventing the fabric from fraying).

Then tuck the ears over the top corners of the mouse’s head and sew them on, like so:

Next you need to make a nose for your mouse. Cut three triangular pieces and then, putting their right side edges together, sew them together lengthways, to their points – I’m not explaining this very well – look at the diagram below 😀 Leave the base ends open, turn right side out and fill with stuffing.

Then tuck in the edges, and sew the nose onto the mouse’s face.

Next your mouse will need some eyes. I sewed over and over in one place to make these eyes, but you could sew circles of fabric on, or use buttons.

Now your mouse needs a tail 😀 This time I folded a length of fabric up so that the edges were tucked in, and sewed it over, but I have also used ribbons and oddments in the past. Attach the tail to the back of the mouse’s body.

Now your mouse is finished! I bet he’s cute 😀 Send me a photo, I’d love to see him or her ❤ Here’s some I made earlier:

You can make lots of friends for your mouse, in all shapes and sizes. Here are some I made earlier:

So there you have it 😀 A word of warning – once you start making rag mice, you may find it difficult to stop 😉

And then there was Denzel

December 6, 2016

By Violet's Vegan Comics

The Anderson family are not complete without Denzel so here he is 😀

I followed this free pattern of a Scottie dog by Sue Stratford

and made him look as much like Denzel as I could. I knitted him in white and stitched on the orange colour after he was sewn and stuffed. He’s a bit big when he’s standing next to the family but I think you’d be hard pushed to find a smaller pattern 🙂

Alternatively, if you’re not a knitter or you fancy doing something different, how about making an origami Denzel?

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vegan, vegetarian, homemade, crafts, origami, knitting, needlework, papercrafts, dogs, toys, handmade toys

Meet the Family

December 5, 2016

By Violet's Vegan Comics

Old Red is fully furnished and ready to be enjoyed by the Andersons – so where are they? Where are the Andersons? Oh look, here they are:

Miranda knitted Aiden and Cara and Casey and Brietta, and it didn’t take her long.

She got the pattern from loveknitting.com where it is free to download. It’s a Goldilocks finger puppet by Amanda Berry which, at 7cm tall, is just the right size but, since we didn’t want finger puppets, Miranda stuffed the skirt, and sewed up the middle of it to make trousers for the boys, adjusted their heights and gave them the appropriate hair etc (including a beard for Aiden) and there you have it – The English Family Anderson, all ready to live happily ever after in their bus 😀

Now, where’s Denzel? 😉

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knitting, crafts, needlework, dolls, toys, homemade, handmade, vegan, vegetarian, recycling

The Andersons’ Knitted bus: The End

December 2, 2016

By Violet's Vegan Comics

You may have noticed that in the end the bus isn’t furnished exactly as shown in the story. That is due to the fact that it has the proportions of a camper van because of the pattern I used. This Old Red is therefore not long enough to fit in all the furniture I’d planned to include. So I took some liberties. Those who have read The English Family Anderson will know that Old Red’s travelling days are over so Miranda suggested that they may well have removed the steering wheel and driver’s seat to give them more space. That makes sense doesn’t it?

I hope you enjoy the final how-to video which shows the creation of a table, two ottomans for seating (and which contain Brietta’s and Casey’s sleeping bags and bedrolls), and a wardrobe/cupboard for food, utensils, crockery, cutlery, a washing up bowl, and towels and stuff. There’s a folded blanket on top of the wardrobe and a basket of potatoes on top of that. Their few clothes are kept in the drawers under Mum and Dad’s bed. They use the great outdoors for washing and they’ve built a compost toilet out there too 🙂 So they’re all set.

I hope you’ll enjoy making your own camper-bus and I look forward to seeing pictures when you’re done 😀

ps: if knitting’s not your thing, you could always make one out of cardboard 🙂

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vegan, vegetarian, recycling, homemade, toys, model bus, handmade bus, crafts, knitting, needlework, handmade toys,

The Andersons’ knitted bus part five: The floor and the wheels again

November 30, 2016

By Violet's Vegan Comics

If you look back at Part 3 of the bus-making process you will see how I started work on the wheels and the floor. This is how I finished them:

It turned out after all that the toothbrushes weren’t quite long enough to use as a single axle between two wheels so I used four – one for each wheel.

First, by whatever means you have available, cut off the bristle end. Careful – watch your fingers!

Push a toothbrush into the centre of the wheel (see how to make the wheels in part 3) so that it reaches all the way through but doesn’t stick out further than the width of the wheel. Then hold a pen loosely against the other side of the wheel and mark a line across the toothbrush inside the inside edge of the wheel.

Then take the wheels back off and securely tape the toothbrushes to the underside of the bus floor (the card you have already cut out as shown in part 3) so that the pen marks line up with the edge of the card as shown above. The wheels won’t be exactly in line across the bus because each wheel has a separate axle but that doesn’t matter, you won’t be able to tell when it’s all finished.

Then turn the ‘floor’ over and stick some decorative paper to it. It can be anything you fancy – it’s going to be the Andersons’ lino floor. If you don’t have any decorative paper that you like you could draw/paint/print some tiles of your own design, either directly onto the card or onto a separate piece of paper that you then stick to the card. Just don’t get the card wet.

The paper I used wasn’t quite long enough to cover the very back of the bus floor (see above), but since I knew the bed was going to cover the back I decided it didn’t matter.

Get the bottomless bus and carefully turn it upside down. Be especially careful of the piece that sticks up at the front so as not to bend it – I made sure mine was hanging over the edge of the cushion the bus stood on. Position the bus floor like so ↑ and lay the knitted rectangle you’ve made (which is almost, not quite, the size of the floor – see part 3) across the top of it.

Put a couple of stitches in each corner to hold it in place …

… and then sew all the way round, stretching it in line with the bus ‘walls’ as you go. When you get to the wheel axles, just sew around them and keep going.

When you’ve done that, you can put the wheels back on 😀

And there you have it! 😀 Be gentle, those wheels will come off quite easily. And of course, if you’ve used toothbrushes like me, they won’t go round. But they will look nice and, after all, Old Red has retired now so she just wants to sit still 🙂

And there’s a nice new floor!

That’s it for now. Today I’m going to make a wood-burning stove out of this pill bottle ↓ I’ll tell you about it tomorrow 😀

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Click here for Part 6

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vegan, vegetarian, toys, homemade, crafts, needlework, knitting, sewing,

The Andersons’ Knitted Bus, Part 4: a bed for Mr and Mrs

November 29, 2016

By Violet's Vegan Comics

First you need a large, empty matchbox.

Find some decorative paper that looks like it would make good-looking bedding …

… and wrap up the matchbox like a birthday present. Then find another matchbox.

Measure it and mark the middle.

Take out the drawer and cut the insides and outsides in half.

Now you have two drawers. Put them back in. They’re going to provide the Andersons with under-bed storage space.

Cut out some more of the decorative paper and stick it to the front of the drawers.

Tape the drawers together, side by side, ….

…. and stick the ‘mattress’ on top of them.

Now you need some pillows:

Find a scrap of pretty material. Cut it, fold it (right sides together), sew it (leaving one side open), and …

… turn it right side out, stuff it with cut up bits of rag, or yarn or whatever soft stuff you’ve got lying around, and sew up the open side.

My bed still needed something more to make it cozy so I found this lovely beaded doily (the kind used to protect a glass of lemonade from flies at the picnic) and thought it would make a lovely bedspread.

And I knitted a little blanket for warmth.

Et voilà!

Now I must get the floor done!

😀

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Click here for part 5

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vegan, vegetarian, crafts, knitting, paper crafts, sewing, homemade, homemade toy, model bus, model furniture, children’s toys

The Andersons’ bus part three: some wheels, half a floor and a repetitive strain injury

November 28, 2016

By Violet's Vegan Comics

It’s perhaps not as cool as a sports injury but, when you’re too excited to pace yourself, a repetitive strain injury is just as inconvenient. I have been knitting for several hours a day for about two weeks with no ill effects but after making the bus’s wheels I had such bad shoulder pain that I had to take a break. It seems feeble because all I was doing was winding yarn around a cardboard circle, over and over – it’s not what you would call hard work. But there it is. I’ve been stopped in my tracks 🙂

This is what I’ve got so far:

I decided to make the bus wheels by cutting out cardboard circles which are a little bit smaller than the required (guessed) bus wheel size, cutting a smaller circle out of the middle of them, and winding yarn around them like you would if you were making pompoms. Unlike when you’re making pompoms, you only need one cardboard circle per wheel, and you stop winding just before you get to the centre, leaving a tiny hole in the middle for the axle.

The axles are going to be old toothbrushes which just happen to be a little bit wider than the bus.

I didn’t have any black yarn but decided that doesn’t matter – groovy people like the Andersons would probably enjoy having different coloured wheels 🙂

When I’d finished the wheels I needed a floor to attach them to. I’m no longer following the pattern so this is an experiment which I hope will work. I’m winging it.

I drew around the bottom of the bus on cardboard and cut it out.

Then I cast on enough stitches to cover about two thirds (or nearly three quarters) the width of the bus floor. I haven’t proved this works yet, but the knitting will naturally get wider than the cast-on row and I want the finished piece to be slightly smaller than the cardboard so that it has to be stretched taut to cover it. It remains to be seen whether I cast on the right amount of stitches to make it work.

dot dot dot 😉

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click here for Part 4

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vegan, vegetarian, crafts, knitting, paper crafts, sewing, homemade, homemade toy, model bus, model furniture, children’s toys

Andersons’ Knitted Bus – Part 2

November 25, 2016

By Violet's Vegan Comics

For Part 1 click here 🙂

Ok, on Wednesday I got as far as sandwiching the stiff card between the inside and outside of the two long sides of the bus, so on Thursday I did the same with the front and back ends:

As with the long sides of the bus yesterday, I drew around the knitted pieces on stiff card (tidy up the lines with a ruler) and cut out the insert. If you find, as I did, that your inside and outside pieces are not exactly the same size (due to one being made with slightly thicker yarn), then draw round the bigger piece and stretch the smaller one to match.

The green inside piece (above) came up smaller than the outside front of bus so I stretched it to cover the card as you can see. It’s a fiddly business. I found the best way to make sure your cardboard is the right shape and size is to sew together (wrong sides facing) two adjacent edges of the knitted pieces before inserting the card. Then slot the card into the corner you’ve sewn and stretch the knitting to meet at the opposite sides and pin them. If you find when you try to do this that the card’s just too big, or your window is too small, for the pieces to be sewn together around it, then you can pencil in the correct lines, unpin it, trim it and try again. Eventually you’ll get it all sewn nice and tight.

The front of the bus needed some finishing touches so …

… I drew some buttons and dials onto some of that gridded material they use for cross stitch which I happened to have some of (it’s amazing the stuff people donate to charity shops – Miranda picks up loads of discarded craft items from the Raystede Charity Shop where she volunteers).

Then I sewed it inside the front of the bus.

I did the same for the ‘Old Red’ sign and the number plate. After that I put together the back end of the bus.

You will notice that the back has more height above the window than the front. That’s because when it’s put together it folds over to make a partial roof. You’ll see what I mean when I put it together.

I thought these pretty, heart-shaped, wooden buttons would look nice under the window in Mr and Mrs Anderson’s bedroom 🙂 (If you read episode 3 of The English Family Anderson you will see what their bus interior looks like. The back end is a little bedroom for Mr & Mrs)

I had knitted the back number plate in the appropriate golden yellow colour so I didn’t want to cover it with a white or cream number plate (cross stitch material). So this time I just wrote the registration directly onto the knitting with a black felt-tip. You can’t read it but I think it looks like letters and numbers in the distance which are out of focus so I’m happy with it 🙂

All four sides done. Now it was time to put the bus together.

I began sewing with two adjacent pieces lined up together as above (NB – Miranda found some more bright red yarn after I’d finished knitting!). Then, when I was over half way up …

… I was able to stand the pieces up in their correct position, enabling me make the front piece follow the curve of the side piece. Again, don’t worry about neat stitching. Imperfections have their own charm and, don’t forget, this is an old bus which has probably been patched up plenty of times so it wouldn’t be authentic if it looked pristine 🙂

One at a time I sewed together all sides of Old Red. You can see below how the back piece folds over, above the window, and is sewn to the top of the back of the sides, making a partial roof. In the pattern from which this is adapted, the front also folds over but I wanted to keep my front upright because it has the bus name above the window. Plus I wanted there to be a bit more light in, and easier access to, the inside. I forgot to mention yesterday that I also slightly altered the pattern for the front of the bus to make the windows slightly bigger by making the vertical strut in the middle narrower (only 2 stitches wide instead of 4) so that it looked more like the front of Old Red in my illustrations.

Look – you can peek inside 🙂

Our Old Red is approximately 30cm x 15cm x 15cm, not including the name sticking up on the front.

Still to do:

Make and attach floor
Make and attach wheels
Sew a ‘door’ on the left side front
Make and insert furniture

So I’d better get on with that then 😉

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Click here for Part 3

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needlework, knitting, sewing, homemade, crafts, vegan, vegetarian, toys, homemade toys, model bus

Knit the Andersons’ bus!

November 24, 2016

By Violet's Vegan Comics

Click for Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7 and Denzel the dog 🙂

I found this fantastic pattern online and decided to have a go at adapting it to make The English Family Andersons’ bus 😀

The beauty of this pattern is that the bus can be played with inside and out. As I type, Miranda is making little people (the Andersons) to live in it 😀

So, I began with red for the outside of the bus …

… and then made another piece in multi-coloured yarn for the inside. The Andersons have decorated their home very colourfully so I did what I could, with the colours I had, to reproduce their bus interior.

I made the other outside and the other inside long side of bus and then made the front and back ends, inside and out:

I ran out of bright red yarn, so I had to finish the outside of the bus in the closest colour I had which was a sort of burgundy. I decided that it didn’t matter because the colour of old buses does fade 🙂 Of course at this point I am not following the VW camper design, I’m trying to make it look like Old Red.

The outside piece for the front of the bus includes the colours for the headlights, number plate, radiator and the bus number above the window.

So that was eight pieces done – four insides and four outsides. Then it was time to add some buttons 🙂

The Anderson’s bus has two headlights on either side so I sewed some white buttons in position for them. Unfortunately I don’t have any bright orange buttons for the indicators so I had to leave that for now. I might add those with yarn later.

I added some black stitches to the radiator. Then it was time to start putting it together.

To make the bus rigid, the campervan pattern provides templates to cut out pieces of plastic grid to fasten between the knitted pieces, however I decided to make these out of card. I flattened out a knitted piece as well as I could on some stiff cardboard, drew round it and cut it out. I didn’t cut out the individual windows, just one big window to go between the knitted windows. The knitted frames is all that’s needed to separate them. You’ll see what I mean. The cardboard inserts need to be sized so that the knitting needs to be stretched taut to cover them.

I pinned together the top and one end of the inside and outside of one side of the bus with wrong sides facing together. Then I sewed it.

Then I put the matching cardboard cut-out between them and stretched the knitting flat across it so that I could pin it in place at the bottom and opposite end. I finished sewing all the way round the outside and then around the window frames. I sewed the inside and outside knitting of the window frames together, tucking all loose ends inside, out of sight. As I’ve said before, I am not neat at needlework, but that doesn’t matter. It seems to work out somehow.

That’s all I’ve got so far but I’m looking forward to putting the rest of it together. Then I can get started on the furniture! I’ll keep you posted 😉

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Click here for Part 2

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homemade, knitting, crafts, handmade, toys, knitted toys, knitted bus, model bus, handmade toys, homemade toys, vegan, vegan comics, vegan children’s stories

A Good Book and some Upcycling

December 18, 2014

By Violet's Vegan Comics

When we began our home schooling adventure all those years ago we were very lucky to find this wonderful book. Unqualified Education is full of inspiring ideas and information, advice and encouragement. It is an absolute joy and still a great resource after the children have grown up.

We decided to home school when my eldest daughter was just 12 and my youngest was 9. It was not because they were bullied or anything, and they were not struggling with any of the work. It was just that life is short, and childhood so short that they should be able to enjoy it all. In school they were forced to conform to the ‘norm’, to study a set curriculum. It was so rigid. My eldest was so stressed. She got detention for wearing the wrong colour socks for PE; her friend who had cut his hair into a mohican, and had assured his teacher that he would wear it flat and combed tidily for school, was told “Absolutely not! Shave it all off!” They simply weren’t allowed to be individuals.

At home we were free. They could study what they wanted, how they wanted. We went bike riding and swimming. We grew vegetables and cooked and sewed and painted and, yes we did maths and English, but we read and read and read – really good books. We did history and learnt Welsh (a bit). What I knew I taught them; what I didn’t know we learnt together. It was the best time.

This book was a wonderful support and inspiration. Mind you, it’s a good book for anyone, whether home schooling or not. As you can see from the Contents page, there’s a lot in there, and the recipes in the cooking section are all vegetarian and nearly all vegan! There is the most amazing chocolate chip cookie recipe – mm mmmmm!

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Anyway, I needed a new apron so I got out the book, looked up the apron pattern and upcycled myself one:

(You can click on the pics to enlarge them by the way)

I didn’t have a broadsheet newspaper but luckily Miranda had an old pad of flip-chart paper which she’d rescued from the bin at work and that was just right for this job.

I upcycled an old duvet cover – thoroughly washed of course! I didn’t do the little pocket because I wanted a big pocket – read on 🙂

You can sew it by hand, it just takes a while. Luckily I had use of a sewing machine – thanks Mum 🙂

After the hemming was done I attached the ties as shown in the instructions.

I decided to make a pocket out of this gorgeous vintage tea towel found in a charity shop. I cut off the bottom row of dogs and hemmed the raw edge.

Then I put on the apron so that I could position the pocket and put in a pin to mark the position of the centre of the top of the pocket.

Then I sewed it on. With a pocket this size you have to sew up the middle, effectively creating two pockets. No dogs were harmed by this procedure – I was very careful not to sew over any of them 🙂

All done!

Recycle an old shirt or two

April 26, 2014

By Violet's Vegan Comics

Here’s an idea I got from this book: Click on the pic find it on Amazon

At least, I think I got it from this one but I gave it away a while ago so I’m not 100% sure. Anyway, if you’ve got a couple of old shirts – preferably big men’s ones – lying around with nothing to do, why not cut them up and make a new apron? My husband decided these just weren’t him any more. Excellent! 😉

So, you’ve got your hands on a couple of old shirts that nobody wants – actually you could do this with one shirt but it’s nice to have contrasting patterns and colours to work with.

Cut out the back of the shirt which is going to be the main piece of your apron. If, like me, you don’t want to be bothered with hemming or edging, cut outside the seam (as shown here) and then your edge is already hemmed. Cut up to the arm pit on both sides of the back and then straight across.

It should look something like this.

Cut off the collar of the other shirt (or the same one if you prefer) – this is going to be your apron’s waistband. You only want the bit that would go around the neck, not the triangle-ish bit. Again cut outside the stitching so that you don’t need to edge it yourself.

Then you need to unpick the bottom edge of the collar …

… so that you can slightly gather the top of your apron and fit it inside the collar (now waistband). Pin it in place.

Sew on the waistband. I like zigzag but you could easily do this by hand.

Now for your design. You could cut out the breast pocket from one of the shirts and attach it to your apron. I think that’s what the book tells you to do and it does look lovely but I thought “I don’t need a pocket on my apron” so I decided not to. You could do anything you like … or nothing at all 🙂 I went with lettering.

Cut your design out of the contrasting material ….

… and pin it to your apron.

Sew it in place.

Nearly there. Now you just need ties.

I used the shirt button bands for the simplicity. They’re already stitched and you can attach them to the collar/waistband with buttons!

Crafty Vegan

April 23, 2014

By Violet's Vegan Comics

Veganism should be happy and it should be everywhere.

You can say it loud and proud without ever having to open your mouth!

Show the world your happy veganism by writing it on your stuff!

No pattern needed for these make-it-up-as-you-go bags and pencil cases made from upcycled old jeans and shirts. Just put your imagination behind your scissors and get snipping. Then sew your designs to your background. The lettering (above) is made by sewing knitting yarn onto the material with zigzag machine stitch.

This bag is different from the others in that it has no zip at the top. Instead it has a fold-over flap that keeps your bag closed. This is easily done by taking a rectangular piece of fabric which is a little wider than you want your bag and a bit longer than three times the depth of your bag. Place a piece of contrasting material the same size (for the lining) with it’s right side against the right side of the outer fabric. Then sew around 3 sides of the two of them and turn them right side out. Tidily sew the open end together with the rough edges tucked in.

Then sew on your design(s). If you’re doing a design on front, back and flap like this one, make sure each design will be the right way up when the fabric is folded. Pin it first if you’re not sure.

Now, with your designs on the outside, fold the bottom of this piece up to 2 thirds of the way up – the last third will be your fold-over flap – then sew up the two sides (sew it inside out if you don’t want the stitches to show). You should now have a bag (minus the strap) with a fold-over flap.

So, you’ve got your bag, you’ve got your design on your bag, now you just need to cut your strap, sew it together if it’s in two pieces, and attach it. This “Smile – U R Vegan” bag is made of an old shirt and some oddments of material. The strap is the button bands of the shirt. Make sure your stitching is strong but don’t worry about neatly hemming it – I think it looks good being a bit rough around the edges. Button hole bands are good to use for this because half the work’s done for you as it’s already sewn double thickness.

And that’s pretty much it. You could have a different one for every day of the week! 🙂