DIY Minion Softies

Earlier in the year when the second Despicable Me movie was released, naturally my niece (4) and my nephew (6) fell in love with the characters all over again. I have a bit of a history of softie making for my nephew (and trust me alot of the toys are DODGY) but he loves all of them regardless of how they turned out. 

Not long after the movie was released it dawned on my nephew that I could make him a minion softie. He begged and begged, and knowing it would not be an easy task I kept putting him off and telling him I was too busy hoping he would forget, but of course, he did not. It didn't take long before my niece caught onto this and of course she wanted one too. So a few months ago I thought, what the heck, I'll make minions for Christmas. 

I scoured the internet for softie patterns because my history of toy patterns is far from polished. I came across this AWESOMELY great tutorial and based my creations off of it!

For the hair I found this neat wool at Lincraft that was all curly and knobbly looking. I threaded it through on the tops of their heads and knotted the strands into place. I think they look neat!

Mr 6's name starts with an S and Miss 4's name starts with a B so I wanted to make sure their minions were personalised so that there could be no arguments or confusion as to which minion belonged to who. So that is how the idea of the little logo got changed to the blue & pink letters on the overalls! At the end when I was adding the buttons it only seemed natural to match them to the letters and I love how they look!

And then it dawned on me there are different kinds of minions! So I was able to adjust the pattern and made the both the shorter two eyed minion and the taller one eyed minion (I have NO idea what their names are???). 

I decided to put in a lot of effort into making small, close stitches to make sure each element was ridiculously secure. I know the way  my niece and nephew play and careful and delicate is not their forte! It took me a long time to get all the elements completed but I think that gives the minions an overall more polished appearance which I'm pleased with.

The mouth's. That is always my least favourite part to tackle on any softie. More times than not they just look weird. I'm so pleased both mouth's turned out on these. It was one major "PHEW" from me!

And here are the finished products. Don't they look great? I know they will be happily received and loved on Christmas morning.

Have you made any Christmas presents this year? I'd love to hear about your creations.