In 2013 my book, Stuffed Animals: From Concept to Construction, was published by Lark Crafts. This book was my baby. The idea for it came to me way back in 2009 when I was searching for a guide to designing my own sewing patterns for stuffed animals and couldn’t find one. After months of looking it finally dawned on me that what I needed simply didn’t exist and if I wanted it I had to write it.
I drafted a book proposal that I now realize was ridiculously overcomplicated and sent it off to a half dozen publishers. Craft publishing was still thriving back then and despite the fact that I clearly didn’t know what I was doing I got phone calls from several acquisitions editors including Tricia Waddell at Interweave. She nicely pointed out the weaknesses in my proposal and suggested that instead, I do a book of the birds I’d been making. That seemed so easy, and really fun, too, so I went for it and wrote my first book, The Artful Bird, which was published in 2011.
Writing that book was a massive learning process for me. My editor was a poor communicator (but I had a great publicist!) and although I’m proud of that book I came away with one major regret: the templates are not full-size. In order to sew a bird, you first need to enlarge the templates on a photocopier. There’s really no excuse for this. The birds aren’t large to begin with. The user experience is sub-par and it still makes me upset to think about it.
The day The Artful Bird came out I realized that I now had a much clearer vision for my original book idea, the guidebook to designing stuffed animal sewing patterns. I pitched it to Interweave because my contract granted them the right of first refusal. They turned it down. (They offered to publish a book similar to The Artful Bird, but with sea creatures. I politely said no.) So I shopped my idea around, this time with a much tighter proposal, and Lark Crafts bought it.
I was assigned a fantastic editor who understood me and my idea from the get-go. He knew exactly what to do to create an amazing book and custom designed everything so it would be beautiful and user friendly. I’m so grateful to him (thank you Thom!).
I paid for and shot this book trailer with money from my advance. That was a neat experience, too!
When it came time to talk about templates I got really serious. They had to be full-sized. But there were a lot of them and it was going to be a tight squeeze. Thom suggested a CD, but I said no way. CDs were already a thing of the past (this was in 2013). There was no way I was going to put the templates on a piece of hardware that would be out of date in a year or two.
I suggested that we overlap them like they do in the Japanese craft books. Although it’s unusual in an American craft book, in Japan templates are almost always printed on top of one another. Readers just trace off the one they need. We would also offer them online in the usual single spread layout for free for anyone to print out. Thankfully Thom liked this plan and when the book came out readers seem to like it too. (The book has 96 reviews on Amazon with a 5-star average rating. Yay!)
Unfortunately, Lark Crafts is no more. It was a subsidiary of Barnes and Noble and they dissolved it some time ago. The Lark Crafts website where the templates for the book were hosted was maintained until a few months ago, but now that’s gone, too. I had no warning that it was about to disappear and actually didn’t realize what had happened until several readers emailed alerting me to the situation. I hadn’t downloaded the PDF of the templates and sadly had no way to retrieve them. Then, last week a reader named Daniel found them and sent them to me! He says:
Hi Abby, I was able to find my PDF version of the patterns after scouring my files. I have attached them just in case you’d like to add and link them on your site for others to download. I have found the separated out version to be helpful and quick to print. Thanks again for a wonderful book; I just finished making the kangaroo for our newborn nephew.
Thank you so much, Daniel! I’m going to do just as you suggested. The PDF of the templates for Stuffed Animals: From Concept to Construction are right here. Download them for free and enjoy!
Thank you for this incredible resource, Abby! I’m sad Lark Crafts is gone.
Abby, I am so happy your reader/customer thought to send you the files. People can be so thoughtful. Also very kind of you to make the pdf files available to everyone. Isn’t it great to look back at where you got started and how far you have progressed!?!
Totally. Sometimes it’s super weird to think that this blog will be celebrating its 15th anniversary next year!
Thank you Abby – I have your book and really appreciate the great resource it is. I’m pleased I can download the patterns this way – but also appreciate the full size patterns in the book. A few years ago I went to make a pattern from “Sewn Hats’ by Carla Hegman Crim and the patterns needed to be downloaded from a website – unfortunately the website had gone, but lovely Carla responded to my email promptly and sent me a link to the patterns. That is a great book too. Happy sewing.
I’m truly grateful to Daniel for sending me the PDF. I really should have known to keep a copy of it myself. I’m so glad there’s a way for everyone to still get the pattern templates digitally.
Well that is why sites like Blueprint/Craftsy bother me (owning your classes for a life-time; whose life time? the website?) Anyway I digress. I feel sometimes that publishers have no idea what its readers really want. Your stuffed toy book was really apropos to the market and had a lot to offer. I’ve come to the conclusion full sized patterns are a must as I know now that I simply won’t make them otherwise which is a shame. It must be disappointing to designers not to see proper use of their book for this reason.
It can rather put the price of a book up to provide full sized patterns but there are all sorts of hidden costs in printing out your own enlarged pattern anyway, so I do much prefer it. I think tracing off patterns as long as they are full size is an acceptable compromise, so long as there are not too many, one on top of the other to unscramble – the Japanese dress-making ones are a bit much in this regard and can lead to error.
We are told everything stays online forever, but it really doesn’t – many of my earlier Pinterest links no longer direct me to anything as the website has disappeared. Not to mention I accidentally deleted a whole board of stuff. It looks therefore that books/hard copy will always have a place. At least for the paranoid like me.
Thank you for providing templates for your book, a kind and helpful gesture.
I’m so very sorry this happened. However, you might still be able to pull up the deleted files. Ask someone wise in the ways of the internet if they could help you. I have had this done for my files that were lost. It may cost you a bit, but it was a relief to refund my files.
They are at the end of this post.
Thank you for providing the templates. I just ordered the book and will be able to get started as soon as it arrives. Really enjoy sitting down and reading your newsletter when it arrives in my inbox. I just don’t have time to sit and reads bunch of blogs, and newsletters yours is the only one I read. It is so informative and has introduced me to so many different aspects of the crafting industry. Thanks for all you do!
Thank you for sharing your templates! I love your doll pattern and plan on making a few of these animals for the holidays. (Maybe I’ll finish before December) 😂
Thank you for sharing your templates!
Thank you so much for taking the time to make these templates available. I really appreciate having them as an additional resource for the book!
You’re welcome!
Abby, thank you for all you’ve done! I have a little sister and she is grown enough for sewing. Our aunt gave us your book and we started to create the elephant!) Don’t be upset about the templates! Everything is fine, really! My sister is very inspired and hurries home after school to continue making her future eared friend) Before your book she was adore drawing and we searched different How-to articles and tried to repeat the lesson. Last time we drew wind https://wowpencils.com/how-to-draw-wind-simply/ . Now there is a rolling stone in her album, only sewing toys)))
Thank you so very much. I just checked youd book out of the library and made a dinosaur for the little boy that lives across the street. He was thrilled! Now I can make other toys for him.
Wonderful! Than you Juanita.