Test Card Clown

Here's my take on Bubbles the Clown, first featured on Test Card F. I pretty much made up this project as I went along and I didn't take any photos as I was doing it so if you don't know the basics of sewing you might have trouble following this Instructable...this is not your fault or something you should feel ashamed of, the blame lies entirely with me for being rubbish at explaining the process so I apologise in advance for any confusion.


The Materials
• Pink and green linen
• Light blue, white, red, black and yellow felt
• Yellow wool
• Wadding
• Paper to make templates
• Scissors
• Sewing needle
• Cotton thread
• Glue that’s strong enough to stick down felt


The Plan of Action:
Make some very basic templates for the body, hands and head then cut out some green and pink linen with it. Make sure that the neck is the same width for the main body and the head and that the hands are the same width as the bottom of the sleeve.

Sew the hands first, turn them the right side out and add a bit of wadding in each.

Sew up the body from the top of the shoulder downwards making sure you stitch in the hands so the wrists are parallel to the end of the sleeve and the hand is wedged inbetween the two bits of green fabric pointing inwards. Leave a gap of a few centimetres half way up one of the arms so you can turn it right side out later then sew up to the top of the othe shoulder leaving the neck unstitched. nb. Don't do what I did initially which was happily sew the body up first and then realise I should have sewn the hands in whilst I was going along. If you do it that way you will have a lot of unpicking to do (in my defence it has been a long time since I did A Level Textiles and my memory is a bit rusty).

Sew the head from the base of the neck, all the way around the top and down to the other side of the neck (again leaving the actual neck unstitched)

Turn the head upside down and stuff it inside the main body so that the neck of body is parallel to the neck of the head. Sew all the way around the neck so that the green bit is always on the outside and the pink bit is always on the inside.

Push the whole thing through the gap you left in the arm and use a pencil to push out the corners in the feet. If you've managed to interpret my directions correctly, firstly you deserve a medal, but also you should have a nice hole between the body and the neck (please say you do!)

Stuff the whole thing with wadding and then sew up the gap by turning the edges in on themselves slightly and sew it up as neatly as you can. They breathe a huge sigh of relief because it's all dead easy from this point onwards.

Make a pattern for the face and cut around it with the white felt.

Cut out a mouth shape and a circle with the red felt, two ligt blue diamond shapes for the eyes, two black triangles with a concave curve at the bottom for the eyebrows and two small black circles for the pupils. arrange all the coloured felt pieces onto the white base, stick it all on using your glue and then stick that onto the head.

Using light blue felt, create a cone shape for the hat, glue it down and then trim to your required size. Cut out four yellow circles and stick two on the hat and two down the middle of the body for the buttons.

Cut up some lengths of wool and stitch them into the left and right hand sided of the hat and then sew a couple of stitches to loosely secure the hat to the head.

Et volia! Hopefully you have ended up with your very own Bubbles the clown.