Quick, sweet and sentimental, plushies or stuffed animals are fantastic projects for beginners and more advanced sewers alike. The best part? They’re economical! Download a free plushie pattern, use spare fabric scraps and buttons, and recycle stuffing from old pillows or toys — you’ll have a new project without spending a dime!
Choose your favorite plushie pattern to sew next!
1. Snuggle Bunny and Kitty
These cuties are made of felt and the pattern includes smart instructions for how to draw grids to help you position the embroidered facial features, arms and ears. Other nice touches are the pink cheeks, made with a pink pencil, and the pompom tails! Don’t forget to use erasable ink pens for this, and test them on a little scrap of fabric.
2. Chicken Little
These little hens are cute, easy and pretty versatile: according to the designer (who is also the instructor for our Fusible Appliqué Made Easy class), they can be filled with something weighty to become fun pattern weights, or you can add a ribbon loop on their back seam and hang them as an ornament.
3. Rainbow Rattle Baby Toy
An easy pillow can easily be transformed in a charming playful stuffed toy just by adding rainbow rickrack and including a rattle inside. Little kids will love it!
4. Alpaca Mini Puffs
Plushies can be mini in size but huge in cuteness, and these 2-inch-tall sheep are the proof! The tutorial included with this plushie pattern teaches you how to embroider the face, how to add beads and how to sew the tiny pattern pieces together by hand.
5. Fall Hare
This 8″ hare made it to my heart — I am not sure if it’s the pink nose or the blue eyes or the repurposed wool fabric, but I truly have a thing for it! The designer suggests adding lavender to the filling to make it smell heavenly. I think this is a smart idea that can apply to all of the toys in this list to make sure your little ones will love them even more!
6. Foxlette Fox
Another great easy plushie pattern made using repurposed materials: these sweet sweater foxes! The designer suggests you use a sweater with little or no stretch. A great way to make any sweater stable is to purposely felt it in your washing machine.
7. Bookworm Cloth Doll
Can we really talk about plushie patterns without including a cloth doll? I am sure there’s a law that says we can’t! This specific doll with another free pattern for clothes. The whole Snugglebug project has a story that is worth reading, in my humble opinion.
8. Cardinal
This is probably the only pattern on this list that I wouldn’t suggest to a beginner. Per the designer’s instructions, you need to know several tricky techniques, including adding seam allowances (which aren’t built in). That said, the finished project has a professional quality, and it would make a fabulous gift.
9. Little Larks
These lovely larks are actually meant to be lavender sachets to hide in your closet, but I can see them as party favors or keychains since they’re just 3″ tall. Plus, they can be made of fabric scraps!
10. Monster Fluff
These monster plushie patterns are more squishy than scary — they look adorable to me! Make sure to sew the buttons with a heavy-duty, quality polyester thread so they won’t detach when a little kid puts them in his mouth!
It's now May and still no patterns.
Going on 9 months and still no patterns. You have no problem taking our money monthly but you dont deliver what you claim.
No patterns? Why do most of your "free" patterns have NO patterns???
Still waiting on the patterns
Do you realize how long we have been waiting for patterns? This site is very disappointing. Unless a person wants to take classes on specific sewing procedures, which you can get for free from many sites, this is a very big waste of time and money. When I find a picture and want to get the pattern, if it says Craftsy, I don't even bother to click on it because I know the pattern will not be there.
Thanks for the update, but this site and it lack of content/patterns is ongoing...I paid for a year of access and rarely find any thing useful to make...when can we expect more content...Maybe you should remove all incomplete content...and extend our paid memberships due to these issues...
When/where do we access the patterns described in this article?
When will the patterns be available?
Is there a download link for these patterns?
Where are the patterns?