Peter the Pangolin

Hello

Meet Peter the Pangolin, my daughter asked me to make her something for her birthday and as we had prevoiusly admired fabulous pangolin softies on etsy and pinterest I decided to make one for her.

 

To get the shape right I googled images of pangolins and then sketched out the rough shapes and made a calico toile to see how it all went together .

There were lots of adjustments to make , mostly to the back feet, you can see in the picture above it needs a few tweaks (and claws!)  I also added darts to the gusset panel to make sure his legs didnt splay outwards.

Once I had corrected the back  foot , I tackled the scales…..

Pangolins are pretty well armoured as you can see, I cut out scales in six different sizes and pinned them on to the toile to see how many I needed, 130 as it turned out !

Next I cut all the scales out from on old suede jacket, which was a lovely mink colour , and then cut the rest of the pieces from cream faux suede fabric.

Pinning the scales in place was fun, the suede was very soft but needed a thimble when I ran out of bobble headed pins.

I machined the scales on with a zigzag stitch starting from the tail, here’s the first side done.

Then I did his front claws ,much  trickier in suede as I couldn’t persuade them to turn through , so ended up top stitching the seam underneath instead .

Here’s his front claws attached.

I found the rest went together pretty quickly although broke 2 needles doing the back feet, claws and suede sole way too thick for my machine to handle !

Here he is all finished – and my daughter loved him. now just got to make her something for Christmas ☺