A true story of holiday sewing inspiration from Jhodi Ulrey...

It was going to be a tight Christmas for our family budget-wise. We'd had a series of expensive home and car repairs and my husband and I were determined to pay them off as quickly as possible. That meant cutting our gift-buying budget to the bone. It also meant I'd be making the two dozen or so gifts we'd be giving our extended families. I do not wear the 'DIY Crown' in our family, but they say determination is half the battle, right?

Making gifts for adults certainly takes a bit of creativity. But at least grown-ups appreciate the fact you took the time and effort to make something yourself.

Kids, on the other hand, are much tougher to make gifts for. When your young niece has asked Santa for an iPhone, she's probably not going to be too thrilled when her aunt gives her a set of monogrammed tea towels.

Fortunately, I found inspiration in a popular decorating magazine. It was an adorable stuffed pig made out of an old felted (specially shrunk) sweater. They even had a simple pattern. I don't have a lot of sewing experience, but I thought, "I could do this." I could knock out half a dozen of these little piggies for my five nieces and young nephew – probably finishing the whole project in a weekend. All I needed to do was find some old argyle sweaters.

I haven't seen it on the news anywhere, but I'm sure there's a national shortage of old argyle sweaters. My plan was to just drop by a thrift store, find a rack full of them, and take my pick. Not so fast. I discovered not only are old argyle sweaters hard to find at a second hand store, you're lucky to find any pure wool sweaters. (It has to be pure wool to shrink in the felting process.)

However, I was not going to give up. I enlisted the help of my 13-year-old niece, who promised to act surprised when I gave her one of the pigs, and made a sweep of the larger thrift stores on our side of town. The result: Enough pure wool sweaters to make all the pigs, including one old argyle sweater to make hers.

The next step was the felting process. Basically you just break all rules of wool sweater care: wash them in hot water and dry them in the dryer, and they come out in miniature. I remember ruining several of my favorite sweaters this way in high school. Of course, that was by accident. When I wanted to do it on purpose, the sweaters stubbornly refused to shrink. After some frantic calls to my sister-in-law, I repeated the process and eventually got them down to size.

I thought the sewing was going to be the hard part. But because the natural wool contracts so tightly and evenly, it's easy to stitch on a basic sewing machine. Your stitch holds the edges from raveling. The toughest part of the construction was the ears. We've all heard the old proverb, "You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear." I'd like to add, "You can't make an old sweater into a pig's ear - at least not very easily." I started by sewing the ears wrong side out and trying to turn them. Not only was this difficult, but when I turned the ears right-side-out, they were kind of tube shaped, more like green beans than nice floppy pig ears. I ended up just stitching them right side out about 1/4" of an inch in with the ends tucked under.

Finally, I got the pigs all finished and wrapped. At our extended family Christmas celebration, the kids were opening high tech toys, designer clothes, and beautiful books. What would they think of my humble pigs? They loved them!

My younger nieces rubbed them against their cheeks and said they were beautiful. My older niece held her prize argyle pig on her lap, proud of her part in its creation. My youngest nephew, almost two, tucked his pig under his arm like a football and would not let it go, even when it meant unwrapping the rest of his gifts with one hand. I was actually surprised at how impressed the other adults were that I had made them. (Do I seem that hapless?) But I'll take any compliments I can get.

The pigs, at least one of them, had a final dramatic moment before the day was over. About half the adults were gathered around the dining table, deeply involved in a board game called The Settlers of Catan . After two hours of trading lumber and wheat, fending off bandits and building settlements, disaster struck their island. A gray felted pig crashed onto the game board, scattering playing pieces across the floor and startling the players. When they wheeled around to see who would do something so thoughtless, there stood our two-year-old nephew, grinning with pride. If you can hold a pig like a football, you can also throw it like one.

It was hard to be angry with him. Besides, it was time to go.

Comments (1)

moonshine1993 said:

	... So very cute!!!! Loved the story. Is there any way that you can share the pattern? I would love to make some of them. Thanks!!
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January 06, 2010
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