This is a fun little project I did last year, and it took me maybe an evening to complete. I don’t really embroider, so I went for a hand-sewn look to this that is cute and fun, and easily replicable by any of you guys. I’m sure this could be done so much better by someone with sewing skill, so take this tutorial and let me know if you create an even better one!

Materials:
Brown Fleece
White fleece felt
Embroidery floss in several colors.
(obviously, pick the colors you prefer)

The Process:

Step 1: The Design
You can use any design, but here is the pattern for the little robot I like to call Claude. It’s CC licensed for personal use with attribution, so go ahead and click through and grab it.

Step 2:
I cut out the body and the hands out of my white felt, following the pattern.

Step 3:
Then, I stitched on the robot face and buttons on the body with embroidery thread, part of the charm of this being the ‘hand stiched’ look, so don’t worry if you can barely sew! (I used a lime green, but lesson learned was it would probably work better in a darker, more contrasting color)

Step 4:
I cut the brown fleece into a scarf width, slightly larger than the robot pattern (I laid out the pieces on the fleece to decide placement), and slit the ends for fringe. Since this was a child’s scarf, I just used the width of the bolt as the scarf length (for an adult, you’d need to go longer). Another lesson learned – I would probably double the width and stitch it up into a tube, so the back would be clean and you wouldn’t see the stitching.

Step 5:
Body: I sewed the robot body to the fleece using a blanket stitch. I did a simple stitch across his neck line to define the head.

Step 6:
Arms: I used white floss to sew arms directly to the brown fleece. No fancy embroidery here, just made it up as I went along.

Step 7:
Hands: I placed the balls for the hands over the ends of the arms where I thought they looked good, and sewed them on using the gold floss, similarly to the body.

Step 8:
Final touches: Added “ears” and antenna with gold, and lightning bolts in green.

All in all, a fun, relatively quick project, with lots of learning opportunities. and that is the purpose of this blog, to just TRY IT!

Lessons learned:
– I envision better than I can hand sew. I swear I need minions, maybe elves, to actually execute my visions.
– By the time I was done I was sewing alot better and my fingers hurt.
– Fringe should be cut wider on a child size scarf. And i should take the time to cut it straight.
– I should have used darker floss for the robot decorations (eyes, etc) for better contrast.

All the pics and instructions are also here, as an Instructable!

Well, the project definitely went through some highs and lows– the original robot I had planned, even in simplified form, didn’t work right for the project. And I really am not that skillful at stuff like this, due to lack of practice and/or training. And a bunch of other lessons learned. But I soldiered on and honestly I think the result finally came out pretty cute.

At least, The Boy was estatic about his “New Scarf with Robots!!!”

Edit- this has also been written up as an Instructable!
The Process:

Step 1:
I sketched around with various robot designs, and tested how hard they would be to cut out of the fleece felt i had on hand. Finally, I came up with this design and rough pattern I posted yesterday: Click here CLAUDE-BOT. (My husband calls him Volvo-tron because he’s boxy but good – my husband is odd)
[I was really happy with the design, unfortunately I’m a better artist than I am a seamstress, so feel free to use this little guy on this or anything else – just credit me and let me know what you did–I’d love to see it.]

Step 2:
I cut out the body and the hands out of my white felt.

Step 3:
Then, I stitched on the robot face and buttons on the body with embroidery thread. (I used a lime green, but lesson learned was it would probably work better in a darker, more contrasting color)

Step 4:
I cut the brown fleece into a scarf width, slightly larger than the robot pattern (I laid out the pieces on the fleece to decide placement), and slit the ends for fringe. Since this was a child’s scarf, I just used the width of the bolt as the scarf length (for an adult, you’d need to go longer).

Step 5:
Body: I sewed the robot body to the fleece using somewhat of a blanket stitch, with gold floss. I did a simple stitch across his neck line to define the head.

Step 6:
Arms: I used white floss to sew arms directly to the brown fleece. No fancy embroidery here, just made it up as I went along.

Step 7:
Hands: I placed the balls for the hands over the ends of the arms where I thought they looked good, and sewed them on using the gold floss, similarly to the body.

Step 8:
Final touches: Added “ears” and antenna with gold, and lightning bolts in green.

All in all, a fun, relatively quick project, with lots of learning opportunities. and that is the purpose of this blog, to just TRY IT!

Previous Related Posts:
The Idea
The Design, Pattern, and Lessons Learned