A purple zebra?

On Sew Cool for the Tween Scene earlier this summer I reviewed a McCalls 6548. I sewed up the shirt for my daughter to wear for her school play. They were supposed to wear something "western style." She did not have anything that fit the bill, so I made her something that would work and would be a good top for the whole summer.

She also needed a "stick pony." The kids were told to get creative and that parents were not to go run out and buy one. Given that her mom is a bit crafty, and loves to sew, we had a great time with this project.

I sent her digging through my scraps of fabric and she found this purple zebra twill fabric left over from a pencil skirt I made me a while back. I thought it was great! Then we went on pintrest and looked at several other home-made stick ponies and adapted a couple versions to fit what we wanted.

She is just learning to sew, thus we made it a joint project. She cut out the horse head and ears pattern. That helped her understand how a pattern is cut and how the pieces end up going together. She pinned the pieces together and watched me sew. The main was made by wrapping it around a two inch wide section of a cereal box and then I stitched down the outside edge catching the yarn. Then Abi cut the other side so that we had a bunch of short yarns connected together. Then I folded the yarn along the sewn line and inserted that into the long top seam of the horse head.

Abi stuffed the horse head with poly stuffing and we wrapped the stick with fabric in order to keep it's rough edges from poking through. The nose was stuffed first, then we inserted the stick and then stuffed the rest. Using both a basting stitch to close the bottom and a bunch of hot glue, we were able to finish it off. I did not like the look of it where the stick met the head, so I simply hot glued a ribbon at that joint and then tied a bow.

The yarn and buttons for eyes also came from my stash of sewing and crocheting supplies. And the stick was one that we found in the woods behind our house. This allowed us to completely comply with the school's intent of not spending any money. And in addition to being free, it was a fun project to do with my girl. One of the things I really want to do when I return from Afghanistan is to do more collaborative projects with Abi.