Have you ever heard of Sarah and Duck? Chances are no if you don’t have a small child in your life. But you should watch it, small child or no. It’s a really sweet little short cartoon (each episode is no more than about 5 minutes) about a girl called Sarah and her friend/ pet (?) Duck. It’s narrated by Roger Allam (of Cabin Pressure and many, many other things fame) and Sarah and Duck have other friends like Scarf Lady and Bag, Scarf Lady’s knitting bag. They go on adventures and do fun things.

It is my nephew’s favourite show – it’s pretty much the only thing he watches on tv. For the kids in my life (one nephew and an honorary niece and nephew) I like to make presents for Christmas, and then I generally buy them books for their birthdays. My nephew is about 2 years younger than my friends daughter, for whom I made the Norman Wall Hanging and the Travel Match Game (which my sister has already requested one of, which I’ll make next year when he’s a bit older). I thought about making a wall hanging of Sarah and Duck, but then I decided to make is a cushion instead.

I copied the above image, drew it out myself (although I can’t draw, I am quite good at copying – anyone else?) and then traced my drawing to make pattern pieces. I ordered a load of felt from ebay, cut out all the pieces and sewed them on by hand, using the case of threads my friend bought me for Christmas last year.

Once I’d sewn all of the felt pieces on, the big job left was to embroider all the edges and features in black. They look a bit creepy without eyes and such, don’t they?! With the ebay felt, I bought some black embroidery thread – it took me back to my cross stitch days!

One of the things I’m most pleased with, is managing to pretty much copy the font for the title. I did this in chain stitch, which is one of the only embroidery-type stitches I know how to do apart from running stitch and back stitch!

This is it in its entirety. The fabric I used for the front was part of the same sheet I used to underline my Striped Laurel dress and I backed the front piece and the cushion with calico – in retrospect I wish I’d backed the back with the sheet too, as now it’s white on the front and cream on the back. Never mind. At least calico is durable. I tried to take a photo of my nephew with the cushion – it’s so hard to photograph a toddler and they’re always moving! This is the best one I managed to take!And here he is alseep in the car on the way home from our Christmas get together, cuddling the cushion – aaaahhhhhhh. (sorry the picture is so small, my sister sent it to me on my phone).

Does anyone else really like making things for small kiddies?