Monday, January 14, 2008

hint #3

If you're making a knitted toy for a baby, you probably don't want to use safety eyes. But embroidering eyes on a knitted surface with yarn often doesn't look as good as you would like. I rarely embroider eyes because I dislike how they look, and it takes too many tries to get them to even look half-decent. I prefer to use felt.

You can just use a simple circle of black felt, maybe with a white dot added, stitched on around the edge. You could even add eyelids or eyebrows with felt or crochet. For a cat, you can use a coloured oval with a pupil of black felt stitched on. Or if you like embroidery, you can embroider eyes onto felt, and then stitch the eye onto the knitted face. I particularly like this last method.

3 comments:

Catie said...

awesome, thanks for the tips

Dees said...

I agree totally with Catie,awsome and thanks from me too!xoxo

Unknown said...

I'm making 6 Holiday Mice for my MIL, for a Christmas present, so I'll put a hanger on them of some sort, so she can hang them from the tree. When it came to eyes, I was a bit perplexed because I had no small black buttons, no black felt. I had black pearle cotton but I didn't like that look.

Then, inspiration struck, and I got out my box of scrapbooking supplies and the package of round mini brads in neutral colors - including black.

I put a drop of glue on the head where I wanted the eye (the head was already stuffed), and stuck the brad into the middle of the glue and pushed it into the head.

Perfect! The glue of course dried clear, it goes all the way into the head, and as long as no children are playing with it, I think its fine. It looks good too!