I’d like you to meet Ferdinand, an udderly lovely cow. He is the new friend of a little guy called Archie and a testimony to my return to the sewing machine. I haven’t sewn anything using a machine, since I was in year 9 textiles. But I was recently inspired enough to purchase the Meet Me at Mike’s books by Pip Lincolne. So when Archie arrived on the scene it was time to get cracking. I pulled out the power blue singer (it actually has “blue magic” printed on the side of it!) that my Mum gave me, looked up the user manual online, gave it a service, figured out how to thread a bobbin and I was off!

Ferdinand is made with a mixture of new and recycled fabrics. The blue floral fabric is taken form some 70′s sheets, that were recovered from my Grandmother’s house. There are a total of 7 different types of fabric.  He took me around 8-10 hours to complete, but I think that was directly linked with me not being overly confident with what I was doing and still getting to know the the sewing machine.

In true toy story style, I decided to stitch Archie’s name into Fernidand’s right foot, for easy identification. This bit and Ferdinand’s face, were all freestyled and have loads of character, hence his crooked little smile!

The books have great easy to follow patterns. I’m in the process of sewing curtains for our back room at the moment (not in the books!). The curtains are much more straight forward than the curved lines of Ferdy, but I’m so proud to have given this guy a crack and being able to give the newly born Archie an ace handmade gift made with loads of love! You can check out Pip’s gorgeous blog here or visit her store Meet Me at Mike’s 63 Brunswick Street in Fitzroy.