I have already covered many ideas for sewing: small projects that will offer great practice and adequate warm-up for beginners, projects that you’ll have fun with, useful projects that will add a great deal of practicality to your life, projects that will take little of your time yet still be rewarding with their end-product. Now, the time has come for maybe the most important of them all: cute projects that have the potential of cheering up every household – like squishy toys, action figures out of Disney Pixar universe, and pillowcases with Calvin & Hobbes comics printed on them.
On the aftermath of these projects, I can see your kids (if there is any) approaching you in awe, begging: “Mom/Dad, please teach me this craft you have apparently mastered just by reading the website of a genius lady, so I can sew my own Christopher Nolan’s Joker and be a nuisance not only to our household but also to the whole neighborhood,” but I believe you will not indulge them since you mercifully hate Christopher Nolan just as you have a lovely disdain for every other old, white British businessman.
Before completely spoiling the content of an upcoming post titled “A Case Against Christopher Nolan and Why His Camera Lenses Should Be Sewn Away Into Abyss for All Eternity”, though, let’s see what kind of cute projects you can undertake.
Plush Dinosaurs
I just wanted to start with these prehistoric cuties because I like imagining that everyone who reads my blog has an ideal family which you can only see in the opening scenes of sci-fi movies. Each member of this exemplary family is happy, they are totally obnoxious in the face of things to come, and there’s always a kid around whose obsession with dinosaurs and how their obsession is mocked constitute the element of cuteness in an ominous setting. Yet, as it happened to dinosaurs many millennia ago, all that is ideal in that family can suddenly dissolve into thin air with the unfortunate trajectory of a meteor or an alien spaceship. Therefore, if you have a kid or partner who is into dinosaurs, it’s better to indulge their interests and let history teach its lesson to you all.
If this detour of mine has somehow convinced you, then let me tell you that making a plush dinosaur toy is quite easy – that is, of course, if you are not intending to start your adventure with advanced figures such as Tyrannosaurus rex, who, let’s accept it, is not cute at all. However, with the appropriate fabric, thread, and enough skill and experience, you can even build your own Jurassic Park – although the whole point of the movie was that nobody ever should do that.
Imaginary Monsters Made of Felt
When your kid wakes you up at night and tells you that there is a monster under the bed or in the closet, you might shake your head and think to yourself: “Oh, what a turnip head I brought into this world,” but your kid is no turnip head, at least no more than the other kids in their cohort, and it’s still not too late to accept that we all have monsters and we are all afraid of them. And, running the risk of sounding like a faux psychiatrist on prime-time cable, I am going to ask: is there a better way of overcoming your fears than facing them, and is there a better way of facing your fears than giving them substance?
Felt monsters you can sew either by hand or with your sewing machine (depending on the size of it, of course) are a good way of giving your fears a substance. They are not only going to be cute but cute in a way to belittle what or whom you fear. In the end, you’ll ask: “Was this really what I have been afraid of my whole life? I can squeeze the life out of it.”
You’ll thank me later.
Kitty Plush
It’s only logical that cats follow after dinosaurs and the imaginary monsters that live only in our heads, and they are probably a little bit higher than them in terms of threat levels because they are pretty much in existence. Also, if you and your kids want to adopt or rescue a cat but cannot because you fear their inherent monstrosity, that’s quite understandable and that’s why sewing a plush kitten will be a great idea.
A plush kitten won’t get hungry, won’t start running all of a sudden at 4 o’clock at night, waking you up while you are having a beautiful dream, and won’t grow up only to lose what made it so adorable in the first place.
Oh, you already have real cats? Then, why aren’t you making them a lovely friend in the shape of a plush toy?
Cat Shirts
Even if you just opened the gates of the internet a little bit and took a brief look inside, there is a big chance that you have seen video compilations of cats in costumes (if you haven’t, please go ahead and do it). No matter how much humanity has progressed since such a video first reached widespread circulation, they still remain the best content ever created.
Therefore, if you have cats, if you want to have fun, and if you think that the end-product of that fun process should be cute, don’t think twice and start practicing for advanced costumes by sewing a cat shirt.
It’s good practice, too, if you’re aiming towards being able to sew your own gorgeous garments one day – and what better model might you have than cats? They don’t have a sense of fashion, so they won’t come to you crying about how ugly their shirt is. Yes, they might conspire by themselves or amongst each other about how to make life hell for you, but there is no evidence suggesting even the fiercest of them all will try actualizing those plans.
Dresses for Dolls
I can’t say that sewing dresses for cats is a step towards amateur fashion designing, but if you have such targets, doll-dressing might be what you’re looking for (or a very creepy practice worthy of being the theme of a psychological horror movie).
It’s also an exercise beneficial for both the beginners and advanced. While the former will quickly learn all the cutting and stitching techniques they’ll need for making real dresses, the latter will have a chance to experiment and improve.
Mickey Mouse Ears
Disney provides quite a wardrobe for skilled seamsters and seamstresses, but not everyone can pull off sewing all those princess dresses. Sewing cute and solid Mickey Mouse ears, on the other hand, is one of the most popular projects anyone with any skill set can easily undertake.
It will not only be a fun exercise but also a useful one, whether to humbly attend a costume party or to entertain children.
Vintage Camper
When you are driving or hiking on unfrequented roads and come across a vintage camper, it’s always a heart-warming moment. That is probably not just because of the nostalgia for a time you have never witnessed wafting over you – there is also a part of you that envies what the image of a vintage camper signifies: liberty, equality, carefreeness, austerity!
Luckily, you can have your own vintage camper – albeit as a pincushion to pinprick your dreams, or as a quilt to bury your dreams, or as a cover for your sewing machine to hide your dreams.
After all, a dream is a luxury not anyone can have.
Some Weird Cuteness
Based on what I have recommended above, you can go further and adjust those projects to create your own brand of cuteness. However, there are all kinds of weirdness on the internet you can look at to get more inspiration.
For example, someone thought sewing a cute sewing machine with a sewing machine was a good idea, and after a couple of minutes scratching my head, I concluded: “Why not? It’s cute after all.”
My favorite of all the projects I saw on various corners of the internet, though, was a nursery rhyme art made by sewing. That is probably one of the cutest things I saw and it gave me inspiration for using my skills and tools creatively, so I thought it would be helpful for anyone waiting for Muses, too.
Final Thoughts
In this article, we have made quite the journey, starting with prehistoric figures of dinosaurs and finishing with the best creation of humanity: art. When you think about it on such a large scale, though, I believe you’ll be able to find beauty and cuteness almost anywhere – as if you are watching a BBC documentary narrated by David Attenborough.
That is the beauty of our planet, our fellow human beings, and our lives. There is enough cuteness (mind that the most of it is silly cuteness with humans) in them to last you for a lifetime of sewing projects that you can undertake with your younger siblings, little kids, or beloved partners.
After all, everything is pointless, so just rejoice!
