Sock Bunny - Free Tutorial

Spring is in the air! ... Well, some days it is. Some days it still feels like winter. But I stray from my point. ...

It's close enough to Spring that the lawn needs mowing! (How's that?) With Spring comes Easter and sweet little Easter Bunnies running around out in the yard hiding eggs for the young'uns to find.

I have been wanting to see what I could come up with in the way of a sock bunny for some time now and figured this would be the perfect time of year to share a free tutorial on making one.

I started with some socks I picked up a year ago and hadn't yet had a project for. They were green and brown with the "recycle" symbol on them. They were interesting and different from others I've seen so I kept them around to wait their turn to inspire me. It was these socks that I started with.

This is Lloyd, the Recycle Bunny. He is actually my second attempt at making a sock bunny. I'm too embarrassed to even post a pic of my first attempt, so anyway, poor Lloyd gets no mate. (Get it? Mate? You know, mate of a single sock as opposed to mate like a buddy or the love of his life. You know, I have to explain my little jokes a lot. You'd think someone who has to explain their attempts at humor would just give up, but not me, no, persistence, that's what I'm all about. And again, I stray ...)

Then when I was folding laundry (socks) the other day I thought how cute it would be to make a teeny one out of a baby sock. I went out the next day and found these sweet infant socks and made them into little sock bunnies too.

I call them Pinky and Pearl.

The size of the sock really makes a difference on how long their ears turned out. Lloyd has long floppy ears while Pinky and Pearl have cutesy little ears that stand up.

The two bunnies made from infant socks are small enough to fit into one of those plastic prize eggs - not the standard size, but one size up. The bunny made from an adult sock is about as big as my hand and a much better size for an Easter basket.

So there you have it. My Sock Bunny experience. Below is the free tutorial so you can make some up for your Spring activities. Just save this pic to your computer or print it out and you're on your way!

I'd love for you to make as many sock bunnies as you like for yourself or to give as gifts, but please do not make them and sell them or sell the pattern or any part of the pattern. Thank you!

Socks, Socks and More Socks

I had so much fun making my Fun & Funky Sock Dolls that every time I went to the store, I would look to see what kind of socks they had that would make a cute doll. Well, I bought several pairs of socks in those days. I had a stack of them actually. One of the biggest contributing factors was that my first sock doll pattern only used one sock. - So not only did I have pairs of socks lying around, I had several single socks left over from using just the one to make a doll.

The problem was that I was done making dolls from my first pattern. And I'm the type of person who, when I'm done with something, I'm done with it. So, there was no going back to make more of the same dolls out of the stack of socks I had accumulated.

I knew I had to come up with something else to do with socks just to justify having bought so many.

Well, I tossed around several ideas of animals and dolls that I could try to make a new sock pattern for. What I came up with was to make a sleepy & awake sock doll. I'd seen this type of doll made before - just not from socks.

I figured that all I had to do was to give a sock two heels and I'd have the two faces - one asleep and one awake. It took some imagining, but I came up with a plan to cut the heel from one sock and attach it to another sock to create the look that I was going for.

It turned out to not be quite as complicated as I was giving myself credit for, but nonetheless, I had my sleepy and awake doll made out of socks. I gave them two different hair styles and two different dress styles and voila, all done.

These dolls were fun to make and still had the benefit of being all hand stitching - which for some reason seems to be relaxing for me. If you'd like to give them a try, you can find them in my etsy store http://www.fun4me.etsy.com/ listed as Sleepy/Awake Sock Dolls Tutorial.

Fun & Funky Socks

Through my hours spent browsing etsy, I came across the cutest pattern for a Sock Kitty from http://www.cuddlet.etsy.com/. I bought the pattern and immediately made three different sock kitties. They were so much fun to make that I decided to give it a go at making my own style of doll from socks. What I came up with is now known as my Fun & Funky Sock Dolls Tutorial.

I had a lot of fun creating the pattern for these dolls and coming up with crazy new hairdo's for each one. They are super easy to sew up and I really enjoyed creating different faces to give each one her own personality.

Part of what I liked so much about making them was that they are all hand-sewn, so I wasn't in the back room sewing all evening. Instead I was sitting in the living room with my family enjoying their company while also getting to do something that was fun for me.