Peanut Baby Sew-Along

The Peanut Baby Sew-Along is in full swing and you have two more weeks to join the fun (and possibly win a cool prize, too). This sew-along is being organized by my Facebook group, the While She Naps Softie Designer’s Forum. The group is now 230 members strong and made up of women from all over the world who design sewing patterns for stuffed animals and dolls. This is our first sew-along and everyone is invited to join the fun.

We’ve selected a fun and clever softie pattern, the Peanut Baby, designed by Rachael Gander (of ImagineGnats) for Jo-Ann’s. It’s a free download on the Jo-Ann’s blog.

This pattern is perfect for  softie sew-along for so many reasons:

• Clever! The Peanut Baby is an asleep/awake doll. The hair flips over the head to reveal the sleeping face on one side and the awake face on the other.
• Customizable! Look at the Peanut Baby as your blank canvas. Add arms, applique, trim, a super hero cape, pigtails…Just go for it!
• Quick! I sewed my Peanut Baby in under an hour start to finish. Whip up a bunch at once and you’ll be set for gift giving for months to come.

I asked Rachael to tell us the back story of how this pattern came to be:

The Peanut Baby pattern came together in an interesting way for me. Normally, my making is driven by the thing I want to make, but in this case what came first was the need to make a project that met certain requirements. It needed to be a project that allowed for creative interpretation, but be simple, have limited pattern pieces, and be beginner friendly… accessible, if you will, to many crafters and makers.

I started with the idea of making a very simple doll. I started with the image of a handmade rag doll… I used to make custom dolls and sell them ages ago, but making their skinny little arms drove me absolutely batty. I wanted to eliminate any little frustrations like that for this project, so I just removed all of the appendages! I sketched the head and body as one piece, realized that it looked a bit like a peanut, and the idea of the peanut baby was born.

Rachael’s initial sketch for the Peanut Baby.

The first version of the doll had a little dress, but even that seemed a bit more complication than I wanted. I wanted the project to be super simple, but with an element of fun.

It wasn’t until a discussion about those old stuffed animals that rolled up (remember Popples? They were awesome!) that I thought of the flipping hair idea. Then it was all just trial and error to get the shape right and the peanut baby was ready for plush lovers big and small to make it their own!

Here are a few photos of the Peanut Babies that have come in already:

Peanut Babies by Domenica Tootell and Kristin Schwarz.

Peanut Baby by Stephanie Woodson (who sewed her son a matching cape!).

And here’s a quick video of mine (with added pigtails) demonstrating the fun hair flip:

We’ll be awarding two prizes at the end of the sew-along. First up is a $40 gift certificate to the ImagineGnats fabric and pattern shop. And second, two patterns of your choice from my shop.

Are you in? To enter, sew a Peanut Baby and submit a photo of it by posting it to my Facebook page (or email it to me) by Wednesday, July 16. Winners will be drawn at random and announced the next day.