Homemade Duck

Earlier in the summer, I told some people that my husband had started sewing. He borrowed this book from the library, The Cute Book, an instructional craft book on how to make felt dolls. Most of the templates are cutesy, but some of them are strange. Like the Bad Guy, who in the book is holding a cigarette:


Note: Craft images all taken from Cut Out + Keep. It seems I didn't have my shit together enough to take photos of the book while we still had it.

And the Kidnapper:


The Japanese-to-English description of him reads:
Kidnapper's job is to steal kids.
That white bag is his work bag.
Kidnapper is very trim,
so stuffing him with cotton might be hard,
but neat and trim he must be.

The descriptions are totally hilarious. Like this one for Mechani-Panda, the panda robot:

Mechani-panda is weak.
Somehow he's the only felt mascot who's all square.
But Mechani-panda is weak.
It's because he's Mechani-panda.

I thought this book was a riot. Each description was funnier than the last. I would totally make DB listen to me read each one, even though he didn't think they were funny. I may even have slapped my knee while I read them.

However, DB decided not to use any of their templates. He was determined to make a mock Normal Duck. I have to admit, I sort of thought he was full of shit. I was extremely skeptical that he would actually complete this daunting project, or if he did, I doubted that it would look good. But I was wrong. So wrong.

Here he is toiling away:


And here is Homemade Duck:




With its inspiration:


I think it's really cute. I've encouraged him to make more, especially considering he bought about a ton of felt and thread, but so far there's only one doll.

LB seems to be much more impressed that Daddy sews at all than that he actually made her anything. She tells people, "Daddy sew a doll for me! He like to sew." And well, it sounds so quaint and adorable, like we're Little House on the Prairie. Although, I guess I can't imagine Charles Ingalls sewing dolls.