Tutorial: Turning Tiny Toes

For those of you wanting to make soft toys with toes, I'll try to show you how to turn their toes the right way round once you have finished sewing them. As I'm new to toy sewing, I don't have any fancy gadgets so if you are in the same place, then with a few simply household items you can get by just fine.

For basic animal soft toys, you can cut-out an outline shape (not too fancy or detailed). Place right sides together, sew around the outline (leaving a gap for turning & stuffing), turn it right side out (ref to tutorial below for the toes), stuff it, close the gap, and then add his features (eyes, nostrils, whatever takes your fancy.

Featured here is the Gecko.

You can see the finished product here: Gecko Suckers



If you were to sew around the outline, leaving a gap for turning, and tried to turn it without using any gadgets, then this is what you will probably end up with...as I did :) Before I did some investigation on turning tiny toes and why I'm sharing it with you now.



So here is my first tutorial on How to Turn Tiny Toes:

When it comes to the feet, I traced the toes onto the material, but didn't cut each toe out individually, just the rough foot outline.



It's a bit light, but you can just make out the blue chalk line of the toes.



The next step is to sew around the toes.

 Now you need to cut around the toes and cut little notches around each corner, bend, or point (this prevents the material from bunching up later on). It's a bit tricky, but you need to cut the material as close to the sewn line as possible, without actually cutting your thread. It takes a little patience, but the end result will be worth it.

Now for your simple gadgets....

1. A straw or two or more (depending on their quality - I only had flimsy plastic ones which break quite easily)

2. A sosati stick/ kebab stick/ wooden skewer (the item on the far right is a tooth pick - just for size reference), what ever stick you use, it needs to fit inside the straw and not be too short.

3. A tiny piece of sand paper to round the sharp edges of the end of the stick (you will use the flat end, not the pointy one, unless you want to sand the pointy bit to make it flat too:)

Now you carefully insert the straw into one of the tiny toes.

 Then gently insert the stick so that the top of the toe and the stick go into the straw. It's important to place the stick on the seam and to be firm, but gentle so that the stick does not break through the material.

Gently moving the stick into the straw - if you carefully turn the foot the right way out, you will see the little toe inside the straw, at this point, you can remove the stick and the straw

 And there you have it, one tiny toe turned out.

 Now repeat this for all the toes.

Keep an eye on the tip of the straw if you use plastic ones like mine. If you notice a split at the top, then turn the straw around and use the other side. I ended up using three straws for the gecko's toes.

On websites I visited on turning tiny fingers, they mention copper pipes, which I'm sure will work a whole lot better, but I've yet to look for them as this method seems to work fine for me for now.