Tutorial : : Felt Doughnut Softie

from left to right:

1. draw a doughnut on some paper with a compass. Mine had an outer diameter of 100mm, and a 30mm. diam. hole (that’s 4″ and 1″).

2. cut out

3. …er…

4. trace onto your doughnut felt

5. cut out

6. voila! top and bottom doughnut pieces

7. using the paper pattern, draw a pinwheel design for the chocolate

8. cut out one of the pinwheel pieces and trace the shape 4 times on dark brown felt

9. cut out!

 

from left to right:

1. arrange chocolate pieces on your top doughnut piece

 

2. pin in place. Thread a needle with matching thread (knot the end) and insert between the chocolate piece and the doughnut piece. This hides the knot, it gets sewn between those two layers.

 

3. to 8.  stitch the two raw edges together with a whip stitch

 

Note: I’m using blue thread so you can see the stitches. I switched to brown later.

I’m also deliberately keeping the stitching loose, once again for clarity…you should really be pulling just enough to bury your whip stitch in the soft felt. Not too hard, but not so loose that little gaps might appear later, when you force stuffing into the doughnut.

 

9. when all the chocolate pieces are attached, you can add shading and other color touches to your doughnut top using oil pastels, markers (make bold, sharp-edged marks…not good for blending!), make-up (lipsticks, blush and eyeshadow powders work beautifully), brushed-on acrylic paints, etcetera.

from left to right:

1. now is the time to decorate your doughnut! Use beads, yarn, ribbons, applique and embroidery, glossy plastic things that look like candy, dimensional paints that look like piped icings, and so on.

I just used white seed beads…I was in a hurry to finish this tutorial!

 

2. Pin the top and bottom doughnut pieces together…my pins are the red and blue heads.

The pieces go together with the RIGHT SIDES OUT, that is, normal way. There is no “turning inside-out” in this tutorial.

 

3. We begin by stitching the two pieces together around the hole. Again, insert your needle between the two doughnut pieces, so that the knot on the end of your thread gets buried inside the donut.

 

4. Work a whip stitch through both doughnut layers.

Just a close-up picture of my whip stitching around the hole. I started loose, so you can see the stitches, but with proper tension the stitches should sort of disappear in the soft felt, as they do in this picture.

from left to right:

1. When you have stitched all around the hole, push the needle into the line of sewing…

 

2. so that it emerges on the inside, between the two doughnut pieces. You can tie a knot here, or

 

3. you can shallow-weave your needle in and out for an inch in one direction (making sure the needle and thread never actually go all the way through the felt and are seen on the outside of he doughnut)

 

4. then turn around and come back the same way. This should make your thread secure enough without knotting. Trim thread.

 

Now you are going to stitch around the outside of the doughnut:

You’ll want to work whip stitches along the top and bottom halves of the doughnut, while leaving not one, but two openings in the stitching, where those two arrows are. This will make it easier later to push the stuffing into the curving parts of the doughnut shape.

from left to right:

1. Once again, start between the two layers, so that the knot is hidden inside the doughnut.

 

2. Whip it.

 

3. To stuff: gently ease your stuffing into a loose sausage shape. (Wadding it up into tight balls and pushing these into the doughnut shape will cause lumps and air holes.) You want to gently feed the sausage into the shape, filling it from far inside the shape, up to the surface.

 

4. To help you feed the stuffing in, twist one end around a chopstick or paintbrush handle or something, and use that to get your stuffing down the narrow doughnut tube.

from left to right:

1. Fill up half the donut…you want it well filled, so it has a nice shape, but not hard-packed…this could rip your stitching open!

 

2. Seal up the hole on that side. Stuff the rest of the doughnut.

 

3. Seal up the other hole with whip stitch. You may have to push in more small wads of stuffing just before you close the hole up completely…it can be hard to sew when the stuffing is trying to come out…jab it in with your chopstick, maybe even move it down the doughnut a little bit, to give you room as you stitch.

 

4. See the uneven bit to the right of my needle and thread? I’ll need to ease some of the stuffing from the left side of that doughnut over to fill up that flat bit, which is where I was pinching the felt together to close up the hole.

from left to right:

1. Take a long (20mm.) stitch that runs a few millimetres behind the line of whip stitches. Come out along the line of stitching.

2. Make a teensy jump back along the line of stitching, enter and then push your needle forward to make another long stitch.

 

3. Make two back stitches…this should hold your sewing thread securely without having to tie a knot on the surface of the doughnut.

 

4. Pull the thread slightly to bring it out, and snip it off close to the felt. When the tension is released by cutting the thread, the raw end of your thread will get pulled into the doughnut and hidden there.

You’re done! Give your doughnut a few gentle tugs and squeezes all ’round, to even out the stuffing and get him into the right shape.