Plushie Pals (In-the-Hoop)

These plushie pals have stitch and turn fluffy appendages like ears, arms, or wings. For these plush, the small pieces sew in your embroidery hoop using the file labeled with the letter "b".

Make sure to sew these small pieces using the "b" file before you sew the main embroidery file "a".

Basically, we’re going to let the machine stitch out the ear/appendage shapes first, and cut them out later. That way you know your stitches will go where they need to go.

In order to do this, we’re going to hoop our ear fabric together as two big layers in the hoop. For example, for these kitty ears, hoop your furry fabric and your satin fabric facing right sides together. These two get hooped snugly together, no stabilizer required.

Once your two layers of fabric are hooped, load the "b" file onto your machine. Sometimes this file may be labeled with just a "b" and sometimes it will be labeled with both "b" and "DL". No matter how it is labeled, the "b" file will sew the same way on your machine.

Embroider the entire file onto the two hooped fabric pieces. For example here we are embroidering the kitty's ears. The embroidery file will sew both the seam for the ears as well as an outer dieline around the shape that will be the cut line.

Now you just cut them out! Cut along that outside dieline, and make sure especially to cut high enough to open up the bottom of your ears, like shown.

Turn your ears right side out. Shiny and cute and perfect! No messing around with cutting these shapes out first -- everything is done as one piece to ensure it goes nice and smoothly.

This technique does take more fabric, but trust us, it’s a lot easier than doing them one tiny piece at a time!

If you like, you can add a tiny bit of polyfill stuffing inside the appendages. We liked many of them better sans stuffing. Your call.

The main file of the plushie will sew next. You will see 2 files labeled with the letter "a" for the main body of the plushie. The one without "DL" in its file name is the actual embroidery file.

The other is labeled with "DL" and will be a dieline (or outline) file used to cut the fabric pieces to the correct shape and size before embroidery. Use the dielines to cut both a front and back piece out of your chosen fabric. For more information on using dielines, reference our dieline guide.

Hoop a piece of tearaway stabilizer.

After the front and back fabric pieces are cut out and the "b" file pieces are sewn and ready, it is time to embroider the body of the plushie. Load the "a" file (not the dieline file) onto the machine and begin to embroider the design.

The first thing to sew will be a dieline shape. Spray the back side of the front piece with temporary adhesive and smooth it onto the stabilizer inside the sewn shape.

To keep the fur from messing up the embroidery, place a piece of light weight water soluble stabilizer over the fluffy fabric and tape it in place. Then embroider all the interior details. Stop before embroidering the final step called the finishing seam.

Now it’s time to add those ears you stitched before! These ears were designed with lots of excess fabric at the bottom, so when you flip them in towards the center, you can leave a comfortable margin over your seam line to make sure they get stitched in place.

Each of your plushies has their ears folded in, in a similar way. Remember, they’ll fold out directly opposite out from the way you point them in, so usually your ears will cross over each other when you place them down. This little chart gives you a good idea of where to place your ears on each critter. Note, the birdie’s wings are not added during this step! They are the only appendange to stitch on afterwards, so your birdie is just a regular plushie right now. Tape each appendange in place to keep it from moving.

Finally, with your ears in place, place your top body piece fur side down, covering everything up. Tape it carefully in place. We usually spray it with temporary spray adhesive, but in this case that would make our fur sticky and hard to turn.

Start your machine stitching one more time, and it will stitch your final dieline.

Tear your plushie free from the stabilizer, remove the excess tearaway from the back, and turn it right side out.

Look at our adorable little kitty. He looks like he’s ready for some stuffing!

Fill up your plushie with polyfill, and carefully stitch the opening shut with a needle and thread.

This same technique works on plushies big and small! This is the tiny 4"x4" puppy getting his final touches. Look how cute his furry little ears are!

Hey, what about that birdie? We haven’t added his wings yet!

Easy. Just turn your stitched wings right side out, and stitch them shut along the openings. Then after stitching and sewing shut your birdie body, add them to the side of his body with a few well-placed stitches near the top of the wing.

So, now you know how to make little plushie pals, of any size!

From the cute little fuzzy guys from a 4"x4" hoop...

To the hand size plushies from a 5"x7" hoop...

To the big ol’ 6"x10" plushies from your larger hoops.

Any size is a good size for an armful of plushies!

So no matter what your hoop size, you can create an  army of adorable plush little critters  just waiting to invade your studio, gift baskets, your kids' rooms, and more. A little plushie pal is sure to brighten anyone’s day!