How to Embroider a Chew Toy for Man's (My) Best Friend

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Jennifer Stern, contributor

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Here's Emma with her new funny face toy.

Jen Stern

The bone was a hit, too!

Jen Stern

If you're going to use your own embroidery design, choose one with a tight, heavy fill stitch—that'll stand up better to the chewing than designs with long satin stitches.

Jen Stern

Here's Emma with her new funny face toy.

Photo: Jen Stern

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My dog, Emma, loves to chew on things, so I have to be really creative to keep her from chewing on my stuff! I discovered a way to make her toys more enticing than, let's say, my favorite shoe. I store them in the dog food container...when she's tired of a particular toy, I stash it away on top of the kibble. Later when I trade it for the newest castoff, she's enthralled with it again! You can whip up these dog toys in about a half hour...even if you embroider them! Email me at info@jsterndesigns.com and I'll email you the pdfs of the pattern pieces and/or a free smiley embroidery design that you can stitch on the funny face chew toy.

Here's what you'll need:

• Pattern for the chew toy (either download the bone and funny face pattern or you can draw your own)
• Built-in lettering on your embroidery machine and/or smiley face that you can download for free at www.jsterndesigns.com
• 1/4 yard sherpa fleece
• Cut-away stabilizer
• 505 Temporary Adhesive Spray
• Embroidery threads to contrast fabric
• Bobbin thread
• Good-quality all-purpose poly sewing thread
• Cotton or poly fiber-fill
• Hand needle

Start by cutting out two of whatever pattern piece you decide to use.

Cut out the paper pattern piece exactly first...that way, you can follow along the edge when you are cutting out the fleece. If you try to cut through both at the same time, you'll tear the paper pattern (the fabric is too thick).

When you're selecting a font to use for your embroidered pet name, you might want to test-stitch a letter or two first on some muslin. Watch to make sure that the machine embroiders some zigzag stitches before filling in the letter. These zigzag stitches are called underlay. Underlay helps to support the fill stitches and the fabric from stretching or buckling. Embroidered letters that do not have a good underlay will collapse after the stabilizer is removed and they can distort.

A piece of wash-away topper is helpful in keeping the stitches from sinking into the nap of the fleece. This pulls away easily after the embroidery is complete. If you have a baste-in-the-hoop feature, use it to hold the topper in place.

Keeping in line with my continuing efforts to go green and economize my resources, I try to use each hoopful of stabilizer to my best advantage. The two holes on the top and bottom of the "Emma" embroidery are from a previous project. As long as you're working with a firm stabilizer that's hooped securely, you can get a lot of mileage out of it. By closely trimming around the first two embroidery designs, leaving the rest of the stabilizer intact in the hoop, the hooped stabilizer has enough stability to support one more embroidery.

You can also use 505 Temporary Adhesive Spray to stick scraps of stabilizer over the holes, allowing you to embroider another larger design that needs more space than the strip of intact stabilizer in the middle of the hoop. I often use this technique to save stabilizer.

Here's how the embroidery looks from the right side of the hoop. Notice how I can see the edges of the stabilizer above and below the middle section of the bone—you don't want to embroider too close to the edge of the holes that were previously cut out of the stabilizer. If you're not sure, it's always better to patch the hole first as you play with saving stabilizer; this way, you'll get really good at knowing what you can and can't get away with. (I've had a couple of embroidery disasters stitching on the same pieces of stabilizer more than once...but only a couple!)

After you finish embroidering, remove all the stabilizer from the top and back side of the design.

Match the shapes, right sides together, and pin in place. Position your pins with the points facing in; that way, you won't stab yourself as you're sewing, and it makes it really easy to take the pins out as you sew.

Pin the shapes right sides together with the pins facing inward.

Sew around the bone or other shape, starting and stopping along a straight edge, leaving a 3-inch opening. If your pet is tough on chew toys, sew around the edge a second time, pretty close to the first go around. This will reinforce the seam so it's hard to pull apart.

I also shortened my stitch length to 2.0mm for even more durability.

Clip into any Vs along the edge of the bone or funny face pattern.

Be careful not to clip the seams.

Turn the chew toys to the right side. Using small amounts of batting at a time, stuff the toys until they are firm.

Take the time to press the batting into the far reaches first, then fill up the middle parts. You can use the eraser end of a pencil to poke the batting into the tight corners and ends.

Hand-stitch the opening closed. Start by threading and knotting a double strand of good-quality poly thread in a hand needle. Secure the knot about 1/4 inch away from the opening on one end. Come up on one side of the very end of the opening. Stitch a single stitch along the opposite side of the opening—sink the needle directly across from where you came up. (The single stitch should be a scant 1/4 inch long.)

Close the opening by hand-stitching.

Pull the thread tight—this will cause the opening to close up and the fabric between the stitching and the cut edge to turn in to the wrong side.

Notice when the thread is loose the stitches go straight across the opening.

Repeat this procedure until you've stitched the entire opening shut. Take a stitch (starting directly across from where you came up) on the opposite side of the opening. Pull the thread tight and take a stitch on the other side, etc.

Starting directly across from where you came up, take a stitch on the opposite side.

This photo shows the stitch above being tightened.

Stitch past the opening about 1/4 inch, and knot the thread. Before you trim the thread, stitch away from the first knot about 1/2 inch, and knot the thread a second time.

The opening is now virtually invisible. If you want to make it extra secure, stitch back across a second time and then knot the thread.

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Comments (1)

FashionSweetie13 writes: i have a bishon frise and she would love this , the only thing i would have to add is a squek thing .
Posted: 10:21 pm on February 7th

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