Dotee Dad USB

I was stumped, again, as to what to get my Dad for his Birthday.

Since I've been doing felt-work for swaps on swap-bot, I decided to make my Dad a dotee of himself. I couldn't find any letter beads to spell out "Dad" for the tail, but I found thought this tiny USB would do the trick - and make it functional, too! I put some family photos on the drive, too :)

As usual, I started out by sketching a crude design for the dotee:


When it came to making the dotee, I couldn't decide what to use as a background material for the area around the head - so I decided to dispense the background altogether. I stitched the shirt first, which was fun & it's 'open' at the neckline, that is to say you could place a small note or something inside the shirt. The pocket is also 'functional'.

The face was the hardest - it required so many fiddly little pieces of felt & much hand sewing too. The mouth and eyes/glasses were the last things to be added, and I'm still not entirely satisfied with them. I tried a few different things for each.

On the back, I cheekily added a thinning area of hair! I like that and other details - the monobrow, the "salt and pepper" speckly beard, the chest hairs, etc. I stuffed it with the fill from the inside of a pillow (but I had to keep stuffing in the head to a minimum so that the face didn't baloon out of shape. Since I stuffed the body first, the result was that the body is super puffy and the head rather flat!) which made the bottom button stick out. I used thin black ribboin for the hanger and added a few wooden beads to the USB hanger. The body is 4" tall and 1.75" wide. The hanger is 1.25" and the tail is a whopping 2.5".

I pretty much spent all day making this - it was very fiddly. I don't know if it'll ever leave the house, but in any case the USB screws off and can be carried by itself (though you won't lose it with that dotee attached!)