Sewing the Mouse from the Heather Ross Trixie Fabric Doll Panel

Thomas the dapper mouse from the Windham Trixie fabric Panel is the cutest little dude!

This is Thomas the dapper mouse from the Trixie Fabric Panel designed by Heather Ross for Windham Fabrics. He is small and will require some focus but Thomas is great fun to make and well worth the effort. Once finished the mouse is utterly adorable AND he can stand on his own. It's hilarious to see him standing around in my sewing room.

Things I did immediately because I know this works for me:

• Iron the thinnest Pellon stabiliser to the back of the fabric. This avoids a frayed mess later with the small pieces. This also prevents the stuffing from escaping easily.
• Only cut out 1 of each of the arm/leg/ear pieces prior to sewing. Keeping the layers nice and stable.
• Sew a scant 1/4" seam. From the design it's clear that the pieces stop at the coloured edge.
• Fold seam allowance on the top of the arms when sewing the arms together.
• Cut the pants with a 1/16" white edge all around making them a bit bigger.
• Clip curves enthusiastically.
• Avoid hand-sewing at all costs. I cannot sew anything by hand... and it must be avoided.

Things I'm going to do differently on my Trixie Mouse:

• Sew a smaller seam allowance.
• Use a see-through machine foot so I can see the edge of the pieces more clearly

I only cut one piece, place this on top, and then I sew. Folding seam on top of the arm saves time later. Sew a 1/4" seam.

There is a very thin Pellon stabiliser that works beautifully for fabric dolls. It keeps the edges from fraying and also keeps the stuffing in the dolls.  The drawback is that small pieces, like the arms, are a bit harder to turn but for me it's well worth it. I always like to line the machine foot up along the fabric edge and that is why I move the needle all the way to the right in the foot. I should have used a see-through foot... will do that next time.

Clipping curves with abandon, sew the ears onto the body followed by closing the dart.

The ears were clipped enthusiastically and at the bottom I cut off most of the seam allowance to make space for the edges that need to be folded to the center. Online I found some remarks that the ears were a bit tough to put on the mouse’s head and so I stitched them to one side of the dart, then I closed the dart.

Putting the head together was fiddly but doable. Clipping some curves before sewing really helped.
At this point he did not look very good... a bit of a strangled look

Before I worked on the head I stitched the arms onto his body. Just eyeballed placement and of course his left arm is a bit higher than the right. Handmade, that is what we call this.... yep.

Putting the head together was a bit fiddly but certainly possible with a machine and a bit of patience. It's actually only the 2nd side of the dart that is harder because all seams are curved. I clipped some of the curves prior to sewing to make it easier. He looks a bit strangled in the last photo above and at this point I wasn't sure he was going to work out...

He is coming together with his body stuffed and leges ready to go on.

Good thing I kept going because once his body was stuffed you could see that Thomas was going to be adorable! This is where I placed the legs into the body, stitched across his bottom and immediately missed part of the leg seam, it folded over, ugh... that had to be fixed.

And here is Dapper Thomas, standing on his own, looking at his friend Trixie who still needs to be made. I'll get going on that next but first a lovely nice sparkling drink!

The photos above were the ones my husband liked the best and only when I pointed out to him that the ironing board fabric was ours, he realised that these were my own photos... O ye, of little faith.

Aaaaand yes, I still need to HAND EMBROIDER his eyes and nose. I'm happily postponing that for later.

Cheers,
Christel ❤️