Shake your booties

My college roommate S4 is having a baby soon and last weekend I went to her baby shower in Minnesota. I don't get to see her too often so it was great to see her cute baby bump and meet her extended family. (Who by the way have to be the most fun family I've ever met.) S4 and I had a lot of fun times together at NU, and I wanted to do something special for her that was reminiscent of our time together.

A while back Hobby Lobby had a 99 cent sale on all simplicity patterns and on a whim I bought this really cute baby shoe pattern. I liked the monkey shoes, and thought it would be fun to swap out the monkeys for Willie the Wildcat, NU's mascot.

These were actually much easier than I thought they would be. You start with your outer fabric, and use a fusing called HeatNBond to adhere it to the lining. I used a purple flannel for the outer fabric and a dark purple felt for the lining. Once the layers are fused together, you cut the pattern out of the new fused piece. After that, it's really only a few stitches to put everything together.

To do Willie's faces, I found an image online and then tried to replicate it in gray and white felt. I cut out the head, cheeks and nose individually to add some depth and again heat bonded them to the purple. Then I used embroidery floss to stitch on the eyes, nose, mouth and whiskers. The stitching definitely took some practice. I think the first face took about five times longer than the second face because of all the trial and error. And at the end of the night my thumb was sore from pushing the needle through all that felt.

But I think they turned out so cute! I'm really happy with the finished product and it made for a fun and unique baby gift.