Growing up, some of my best friends were stuffed animals. And I don’t mean that in a sad, friendless sort of way. They were playmates, stand ins for pretending, and comforters. It was my stuffed animals who protected me from thunder storms. It was my stuffed koala I wanted to make sure would be in heaven with me one day. It was the animals who listened to my lesson plans when I wanted to play teacher, they let me and my brother cut their fur when we pretended to be veterinarians, and they hid amongst the couch cushions when we recreated the st. louis zoo in our living room. I loved them all: Heart-to-Heart Bear, my veritable kennel of Pound Puppies, the aforementioned koala, the beloved panda puppet, Winnie-the-Pooh… the list goes on and on. Even as a teenager, it was Pooh who I held when I needed a hug and a good cry.

So I suppose it was only a matter of time before I started my own stuffed animal sweatshop. And by sweatshop, I mean I’ve made two. Meet Peanut and Mooney.

I mentioned Peanut, the wee elephant, a few weeks ago. I thought he would be a fun non-quilt project from the book Last-Minute Patchwork & Quilted Gifts. I temporarily had forgotten that the reason I quilt as opposed to say sew my own clothes is that I can only sew a straight seam with a machine. Elephants as a rule are not straight. So when I say Peanut was handmade with love, I mean each crooked stitch was made with the hands of yours truly with a solemn promise to learn to sew on a curve very, very, very soon.

Yes, he does look a bit like he got in a scuffle with another elephant on the playground, but he emerged victorious and now has the love of a gorgeous one-year-old lady. What more could a wee elephant desire?

The decidedly more photogenic of my recent creations would have to be Mooney T. Bunny (last name pronounced Boo-nee for giggles), so named for his rather large face and widely spaced eyes. He is the reason I learned to crochet (Camilla Engman’s pattern from The Happy Hooker)–not an easy feat for a knitter who likes her needles in both hands! But I must say after spiraling slip stitches through three televised Cardinal baseball games, it was a skill worth learning as he has quickly become one of my new friends. So without further ado:

He’s already kept me safe through one thunderstorm.