vegan things to make and do | Violet's Vegan Comics

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 😉

I’ve always loved bread but it doesn’t love me, so in recent years I’ve had to avoid it. I feel better if I avoid gluten and yeast most of the time but once in a blue moon I just can’t resist a bit of toast. So I decided to have a go at soda bread. Unfortunately, they usually put egg and/or milk in shop-bought soda bread, and anyway it comes in a plastic bag. So I looked online for vegan soda bread recipes and discovered that they include buttermilk, which is made by adding vinegar to milk and makes the air bubbles form in the dough when it’s cooking. The vegan recipes therefore do the same with plant-based milk. But I didn’t have any of that either, so I thought I’d try substituting plain old water. And it worked! Here’s how: First pre-heat the oven to Gas Mark 6 (200*c, 400*f).

Weigh out 12 ounces of self-raising, gluten-free flour and put it in a mixing bowl. You can add a couple of pinches of salt if you want to.
Separately, add one tablespoon (15ml) of organic apple cider vinegar to 250ml of cold water and mix.
Add the liquid to the flour and mix well with a wooden spoon.

4. Then spoon the moist mixture into a lined loaf tin,

and flatten it with the back of a wet spoon.

5. The next bit is VERY important – I learned this the hard way and still have a scar on my left index finger. Before you put it in the oven, cover the tin with foil. If you don’t, the top crust will bake very hard and the weight you’ll have to put behind your sharp, serrated bread knife to slice through it, could result in a bloody mess 😮

I use if you care foil and greaseproof paper because it’s recycled and eco-friendly. Since this won’t make the foil dirty, you can fold it up afterwards and reuse it 🙂

Oh, I’ve just noticed, on the if you care website, that they have an illustration of a roasted chicken on one of their products, which is very disappointing.

I’ll have to tell them that people who care wouldn’t be roasting chickens. It’s horrible when someone you trusted lets you down.

Anyway, back to the vegan soda bread:

Bake in a medium-hot oven (gas mark 6) for 40 to 45 minutes.

7. Don your oven gloves, hold your head away from the oven when you open the door, take out your loaf, remove the foil and put the bread on a wire rack to cool.

When it’s cool you can use it right away, or freeze it, but what I do at this point is slice up the whole loaf and put a small piece of greaseproof paper in between each slice, wrap it, put it in a container, and then freeze it.

That way, I can take my bread out of the freezer a slice at a time, keeping it fresher for longer.

I prefer mine toasted, so it goes straight from the freezer to the toaster, add some peanut butter, Marmite and baked beans for a delicious nutritious meal in minutes. 😀