Despite my arguments with the previous penguin I made, I wanted to prove that this fantastic fleece fabric does work for a larger penguin plush! I printed the pattern at 150% which then gives a 3/8" seam allowance on each piece, without the need to redraw the seam allowance. That 3/8" seam allowance is perfect for me, as it lines up with the edge of my sewing machine's walking foot.

As I mentioned with the small penguin, I changed the order of assembly for this one, just to see if it made a difference. And it made things a lot easier to work out!
I stitched the wings, then attached them onto the flat side piece to make it much easier to figure out which way up they needed to be – no risk of the wings being wrong side up, or pointing in the wrong direction.

Sewing the tail was a marked improvement on the small penguin, but I did end up with a strange twist to the tail... I'm not concerned about that though, as I think it adds a little character to my penguin.

When it came to adding the eyes, I made the eyeholes after stuffing most of the penguin, in the hope that the hole wouldn't stretch like it did on the previous penguin. This worked really well, although it was a little fiddly to make the hole for the eyes when most of the body had been stuffed!

I had some 24mm eyes in my sewing box which I used for this penguin, but considering it's a 150% pattern, ideally you'd want to use 18mm eyes to make them the same scale as the small penguin. Having said that though, I don't think these blue eyes look out of place on my penguin, but if they were plain black they might look a little oversized.

I added some fleece offcuts in the penguin's body just to help weigh it down a little so it would lie neatly without toppling over. It takes a while to cut the offcuts small enough to work, but it's worth the extra effort as a larger offcut would end up being quite lumpy mixed in with the stuffing.

Sewing the penguin's beak in place, I realised I'd inadvertently given the beak an angle! But I think this compliments the twisted tail, and gives it character rather than looking out of place.

I didn't have a large enough selvedge piece left over to add striped feet for this penguin, so he has just regular blue & white feet instead.

This fleece and my sewing skills are definitely better suited to the 150% sized penguin pattern, as it gives you less fiddly turns on the body and tail pieces. I'm really pleased with this penguin.

Stay tuned for my other two fun makes from the same metre of fleece!


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Pattern: BeeZee Art's Penguin Plush, printed at 150% https://beezeeart.com/collections/patterns/products/penguin-stuffed-animal-sewing-pattern-plush-sewing-pattern-diy-digital-download
The amount of stuffing linked at the bottom, gives enough for all five of my plushies.



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