Sometimes I can’t manage to publish a post for a month or more and here’s the third one within less than a week… very strange… 😛
The arrival of new babies is among my favourite reasons to make and send presents to friends. The latest baby was little Anna, born in Kiel, Germany, just over a month ago. So I made a little mouse and matching toques for Anna and her older brother Max.
For the mouse, I used the same fluffy grey bouclé that I’ve used for several stuffed animals in the past (like Juliette’s flying squirrel), added colourful ears and paws as accents and stitched a little face on.
I just realized that I must be somewhat obsessed with toques and hats – I have already published about fifteen posts about different kinds of headgear… but anyway, here’s one more. After all, when I made the toques, the temperatures had just started to drop and the trees were turning yellow and red. You see, toques required to keep little ears warm! 😉 The parcel was on its way to Germany for nearly four weeks though, and in the meantime we’ve even seen the first few snow flakes and some night frost here in Canada… and have actually moved on to warmer toques. I hope it’s still mild enough in Germany to wear these for a bit before winter settles in!
The knotted toque design is an old favourite of mine. I first posted about it about two years ago, but have actually made a number of them since our first monster was born. I love how you can easily adjust the fit by playing with the knot position and I find it looks best with neutral colours, so I chose to use striped navy blue jersey and made one baby hat and one for a three year old. It was just perfect – for both sizes I had a test head of the same age available!
However, when I was first done with the toques, I found that they looked a bit boring or even naked, like they needed a little something to be complete. So I decided to embellish them with “labels”. I looked through my kids fabrics, chose and cut out a few of the printed details and sewed them on. Anna got some pink flowers (matching the mouse’s arms and legs… ) to make hers more girly, and Max got a little choo-choo train. And guess what?! They’re my favourite feature of the finished toques now! 🙂
It was then an instant decision that I needed to make another three toques for our own monsters. Yannick and Anja got the same train and flowers, and Timo got one of his beloved elephants.
… and I was thrilled to see how much they actually like their toques – well, at least the boys. Both of them decided to wear them in the house for a while after trying them on, although Yannick didn’t want me to take a picture of him and kept goofing around… 😉
These five toques were my first project with my “new” serger. Paul actually gave it to me for my birthday a year and a half ago, but apart from running a few quick tests back then I haven’t used it at all… Sorry Paul, it certainly wasn’t because I’ve been lacking inspiration or motivation, I promise! I’m sure I’ll use it more in the future!
And congratulations again, Simone and Clemens, to the arrival of your sweet little daughter! 💛
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