Felt Cucumber

Right, I am going to ignore the comments of some of my family members and upload this post showing my felt cucumber.

This was finished this ages ago, but certain people have insinuated that perhaps my design of this vegetable is a little phallic. Ok, perhaps I could see it too once it had been pointed out, and even more so in some of the camera angles I used to take pictures, but Little Imp doesn't have the dirty mind that some of my family do so here is my cut cucumber.


Tutorial

Instructions for one cucumber
Finished size approx 23cm long 

Materials - dark green felt (about 25x 15cm square), white felt (about 10cm square), needle, thread, stuffing, sewing machine (optional but faster!)

For the cucumber body or skin
Fold dark green felt in half lengthways.  Place pattern template with one long edge on fold as indicated.  Pin and cut out.

Open out flat and then stitch lots of straight-ish parralel-ish lines in dark green thread down the length of the cucumber skin - this will give the ridged effect you see on burpless cucumbers.  I used my sewing machine freemotion embroidery setting to stitch these lines, but you could hand stitch them too.

Felt opened out with stitched lines lengthways along skin of cucumber

Now fold in half with right sides together, pin and stitch around the seams to form a tube.

stitched cucumber before being turned right side out

Clip seams around the narrow end of the cucumber, turn right side out and then stuff all the way to the top of the tube.

To make the cut end, pips and all
If freemotion embroidering the pips onto the white felt, mark and stitch these first before cutting out the circle of felt - much easier to freemotion stitch onto a bigger piece of felt as it doesn't bunch up in the machine.

To do this, mark the circle and approximate pip position onto white felt using a water soluble marker.  Then free motion stitch.  I liked the effect of a dark green thread in the bobbin and a lighter green in the top spool as you can see both colours in the finished cucumber (default, not design, just forgetting to change the bobbin!).  When happy with the stitching cut out the white circle shape.

Top - template ready to mark onto white felt. Bottom - stitched and cut out white cucumber end.

Lastly position the white circle into the open end of the cucumber and blanket stitch it into place with white thread, adding any extra stuffing if you feel you need to just before you close it up with stitches.  And there you have it.  One innocent cucumber!!