We seem to have a definite flurry of children’s birthdays around June. Of course it’s compounded by the fact that our antenatal class friends’ babies are all obviously born within a few weeks of each other. I started trying to DIY a present for each of Bubs’ friends, but instead it turned into these sweet penguin and panda plushie rattles that are being put to use as baby shower gifts. They are a lovely size for little baby hands, have a high contrast pattern on them and make a gentle rattle sound when you shake them. Even though I decided to set them aside for baby gifts, my little toddler has really enjoyed giving them a little bit of pre-loving to pass onto the new babies!

To make things easier for you, I’ve included a free Silhouette Cut File and free SVG file for Cricut. You can download them from the supplies list below. These files are free for personal use, but may not be used for any commercial projects.

DIY Soft Toy Plushie Rattles with free Silhouette Cut File and SVG for Cricut

What you need:

Cut Files (Silhouette Studio and SVG)
Firm cotton fabric
Heat Transfer Vinyl (Black, Gold & Glitter)
Stuffing
Toy Rattles
Silhouette or Cricut machine, iron, sewing machine, thread, needle, scissors

What to do:

1. Download files and cut the animal shape, party hat and pom pom from separate pieces of heat transfer vinyl, depending on the colours that you want. Weed out the negative space.

To cut each piece out separately using a Silhouette machine, use the “line” setting under the send menu in Silhouette Studio. I have saved the different pieces with different line colours, so you can just select the line colour of the piece that you want to cut from that piece of vinyl. It should make sense when you see it open in the actual file.

2. Iron the animal shape onto the right side of your fabric. Remove the transfer layer and iron on the party hat, followed by the pom pom.

3. Draw a border roughly around the shape of your animal, 2-3cm away the the vinyl. Don’t follow the shape exactly, but rather make the outer plushie shape a more general shape. I.e. “Smooth out” the shape of the animal as you draw.

4. Cut out your front and back piece of fabric at the same time. Back piece of fabric with right side facing out.

5. Place the two pieces right sides together and sew a 1cm seam around the edge, leaving enough of an opening to turn the fabric right way out, stuff it and add rattles. (An opening slightly bigger than mine would be better.) Make sure that where you leave the opening is at a point where the shape is straight, as this will make the hand stitching easier. The bottom is generally a good spot. Trim down the sewn edges slightly.

6. Turn it right side out and iron if needed.

7. Stuff with plenty of stuffing and add rattles. I used two rattles for each toy to make sure that the rattle was loud enough once muffled by stuffing.

8. Neatly sew up the opening by hand.

I’d love to see your Pure Sweet Joy DIYs. Show me on Instagram using #puresweetjoyblog or email me at deborah [at] puresweetjoy [dot] co.za. Like what you see here? Follow along on Facebook or Bloglovin and subscribe to the newsletter for exclusive access to the latest news and freebies.