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Cute garden snail sewalong
This easy garden snail hand-stitching tutorial first appeared on my instagram Noisy Tut Tuesday.
It’s almost spring where many of you live, and I know you have been waiting for a while. Let’s prepare ourselves with this little guy for the garden.
This tiny snail is about 1-1/2 by 2″ not counting the eyes.
The height of the snail will vary widely depending on the elasticity of your chosen fabric.
What can you do with this? For me, I made it into a brooch. No photos sorry I didn’t take a picture of my chest. Maybe I’ll find a top with a collar so I can place it on the tip.
I spent about 10 min from design to finish.
Of course, I can’t assume everyone sews at the same pace. But, it should be really easy, especially if you have any sewing experience.
This is meant to be a fun quickie project, so I’d say don’t worry too much about the size consistency.
Skip to the video to sew along, or continue below for the step-by-step instructions.
How to hand stitch a tiny garden snail using recycled fabric
Preparation before sewing
- 1.Print the PDF pattern onto either an A4 or letter sized paper.
- 2. Cut out the shapes. (The patterns are drawn with a 1/8″ allowance. If you prefer to draw your own allowance, please cut **on** the dotted line instead.
- 3. Place pattern onto the fabric, and cut the fabric— 2 different colours for the shell and the body, black and white for the eyes.
Let’s get sewing
Stitching the snail body
- 4. Fold the body piece in the middle on the fold line, and sew around, along the dotted line.
- 5. Sew on the dotted line, making sure to leave a gap in the middle where it says “do not sew here”.
- 6. Turn inside out. Push the corners out lightly without piercing the fabric.
That was quick, wasn’t it?
Moving onto the snail’s shell
- 7. Take the “shell” piece which is the big fat rectangle in the middle of the printer page, fold it in the middle along the “fold” line.
- 8. Stitch on the long side (because we folded it, there is only *one* long side), and *one short side only*.
- 9. Turn it inside out like we did with the body just now.
- 10. Fill it with poly fiber fill.
- 11. Roll it like a cinnamon roll. It doesn’t matter if you start with the closed or opened end, it will be covered later.
- 12. Ok, here is where we will be hiding the opening.
Insert your threaded needle from the end of the roll, through to the opposite side.
Repeat twice, so you are basically dividing the pie into 6 parts.
Attaching the snail shell to the body
- 13. Next is the fun part.
Sew it together first using a few running stitches starting from the head to the centre of the body, then, whip stitch to secure.
I know it’s not useful describing what is actually a very intuitive process.
But once you have the snail in your hand, you should be able to ‘feel’ your way through it.
Or watch the snail sewalong video here.
Eyes
- 14. Always my favorite part. I love it when they start staring right back at me.
Take the long skinny rectangle shape, fold on the line. This time no sewing.
Tie a knot on each end. If it’s not big enough, tie another over it.
- 15. You’ll get something like this.
- 16. Then, attach it to the top part of the body.
I used long whip stitches, pulled very tightly.
- 17. Next to my favorite part. Yes, another favorite. I have many favorites.
Place the smallest circle onto the bigger circle, sew directly onto the knots we made early.
Yes, right through like a kebab. The last shape left should be the semi circle which is a smile.
Sew onto the top body where the eye ‘tentacles’ (what are they called?) meet the body.
Why not make an empathising snail by reversing the smile to make a frown?
Ta-da. How long did that take you?
This is the video below, click the right arrow to see the videos.
If you would like to try making this simple garden snail too, you can download the pdf pattern here.
I’d appreciate if you’d let me know (in comments) what you’d like improved, or project suggestions in the future. Thanks for being here.