Turn your kids creations into plushies!

Your kids will be so excited to turn their own creations into plushies! Kids can either draw their own, or surprise a sibling with their own thoughtful plushie to gift!

Last Christmas my oldest son came to me and asked if there was a way for him to design a stuffed animal that I could put together and sew for him. He is so artistic and creative and I loved his idea and really wanted to make it happen! I’ve been using Spoonflower to design fabric for a few years now and knew that this would be just the place to bring my son’s dream to life!

We decided that it would be such a fun Christmas gift for each of the kids to design a surprise plushie for each other! I just love the thought and creativity that each of my kids put into each design. They each had to consider what their sister or brother is interested in. The thought and time they put into this project made giving them on Christmas morning so special!

So…here’s how you and your kids can design your plushies!

Come up with a design!

This is the fun part! Be creative and come up with a fun design of your own! I had each of the kids consider what their brother or sister is interested in and thoughtfully come up with a design for each other. My son knew right away that he wanted to make a guitar for his sister since she was asking for a real guitar for Christmas. Everyone knew our youngest would want a unicorn because she’s obsessed, lol. My middle daughter remembered that her brother had asked for a Cubs jersey for Christmas, so she came up with a cute little bear in a Cubs jersey and hat for him.

–Draw your design on a regular old white sheet of paper. Use sharpies or regular old Crayola markers.

Scan or photograph your design
We happen to have a scanner, so I took each drawing and scanned into the computer. You could also photograph the designs and upload.

Spoonflower plushie — Scanned in drawing

Edit, brighten and lighten
Upload the designs into your favorite photo editing program. I use Photoshop. If you don’t have access to photo editing software, you could even edit your images in an app on your phone such as Snapseed or VSCO.

-Lighten up the background. If the white paper has shadows or dark spots, lighten those up. Use the dodge tool in Photoshop and Snapseed to lighten up shadows until the back ground of the images is pure white.

-Change the contrast and saturation of the image until the colors are to your liking. Our colors turned out so bright and vivid!

–Be sure to duplicate the images if you’d like the design to appear on the back of the stuffie as well. If you are duplicating your image to use as a back, you will also need to flip the image so that it’s a mirror image of the original. You could use solid fabric for the back if desired. -I uploaded all of the images into 54”x36” document in Photoshop so I could easily upload to Spoonflower and print the designs on one yard of fabric. If you aren’t able to add all of the images to one document, you could upload one at a time and scale the images to fit on a fat quarter.

Upload to Spoonflower

-If you don’t already have a Spoonflower account, you’ll need to create one in order to upload your design. Head to www.spoonflower.com and create an account. Once you’re logged in click, “Design” and then “Upload.” Your design will upload. Once uploaded you can make changes to the color or tweaks using PicMonkey. If you’re looking for a step by step to get your design uploaded and tweaked, go to this handy dandy tutorial on Spooflower’s blog for thorough instructions. You could use PicMonkey to add cute little tags to include on your stuffies too! I added my tags using Photoshop.

-Once your design is ready to go, now it’s time to pick your fabric! I wanted these cute little stuffies to be super soft and cuddly, so I chose minky. This fabric prints beautifully. The colors stay super vibrant and it’s so soft.

-If you’re super patient…you probably want to order a swatch prior to ordering a full yard or your fat quarters. Unfortunately I am not super patient, lol, and got very lucky that my fabric turned out just as I wanted it to. The smart thing to do is order a swatch, make sure you like the look, feel, and colors, THEN order your actual print.

Wait and wait for your fun designs to arrive!

–Spoonflower offers different shipping options that can get a little pricey. I’m not a pro member, so I don’t get any discounts. I usually choose to wait the full 10-12 business days for my print to arrive. Be sure to give yourself plenty of time for Christmas if these are going to be gifts!

Cut and sew!

-Now the fun part! Cut around each design allowing about an inch of seam allowance around each design. I didn’t measure the allowance. No need to be perfect. Place your cutouts with right sides together and pin. Don’t forget to pin your tag in if you created one.

-Sew all the way around your design leaving a small hole for stuffing.

-Turn your stuffie right side out, stuff and sew the hole together.
All done!

My kids LOVED gifting these cuties to each other!! I would love to make this a tradition and see how the stufies and the kids ideas change from year to year. These are the cutest little keepsakes!