A First Christmas cuddly toy

It was my niece's first Christmas this year and I wanted to give her something that would last and that she would hopefully keep forever. From my own experience the soft toys that I've kept from childhood were the ones that were personalised in some way. I was very lucky and my parents had a very creative neighbour who knitted me a rabbit with a yellow dress and white ballerina shoes - I called her Buttercup. Now, I can't knit, so that wasn't an option but a few of the others I still have are ones with added ribbons or clothes made especially for them and that I could do! (Or so I thought)

I started out by buying a cute soft toy on sale from Mothercare and I was lucky that the one I had my eye on went into their (additional) 20% off toys sale so I ended up with a bargain at about £3.99!
I then bought an offcut of material and some ribbon from Hellerslea in Newport. The ribbon bundles were about 60p each and the material - which I think was a sample size - was about £2.

I browsed the web for ideas of designs and decided to try and keep it as simple as possible. I had a rough idea of what I wanted it to look like so I mocked up a paper version and then cut out the pattern from a scrap piece of material.

...There was just one problem. I forgot that the tension from the bobbin is too tight in my sewing machine so it ended up looking like this:

Hmm. Maybe I wouldn't be sewing a dress afterall...
This discovery was only made after about four hours of measuring and mucking up various different paper versions. I'll admit, finally defeated, I shed a few tears. My intended present was ruined. To my mind at least.

I gave up and settled on handsewing the bow and stitching her name onto the foot.

So, not entirely the Christmas gift I'd had planned but it's still a pretty cute present.