How To Make a Stuffed Animal Backpack

AKA, "Don't look now, there's a monkey on your back!"

I was looking for some quick craft gratification Friday night, and it came in the form of this $2 plush monkey:

D'aww. Just lookit dat face!


I thought: hey, why not turn him into a backpack?


So I flipped him over, ripped open his back, and yanked out most of his stuffing:

Good stress relief, that.


Then I found some fabric in my craft stash that kinda matched:

I stuck a small salad plate in Mr. Monkey's butt to determine how much room he had in there, and then used the plate as a template to draw two circles on the fabric. I also cut out a long rectangle of the same fabric.

Next I pinned and sewed the rectangle to the circles, leaving a slit open like so:

Here's a side view:

As you can see, the "good" side of the fabric is on the inside.


Next, my first-ever attempt at installing a zipper:

And it worked! Huzzah!

(Yes, I know it looks wrong right now. You'll see why in a second.)

Finally, I stuffed the whole thing in Monkey's back and hand-stitched it in place along the zipper edges:

My hand-stitching looks like the monkey is the one who did it, but fortunately that fur covers everything. (Just fluff the fur with a needle to release any tamped down by your stitching.)

Now I had a hollow monkey with a zippered back.

To make the monkey ride piggy-back, I needed to attach his hands to his feet. I found a spare strap from a travel bag long gone, cut that up, and attached D rings to two of the ends. Then I ripped open a little bit of the seam on the monkey's paw...

...stuffed in one end of the strap, and hand sewed the whole thing shut.

In the end, it looked like this:


As you can see, I care so much about showing you guys how NOT to do things that I attached the D rings to the wrong end of the monkey. (They should have been on his hands, not his feet.) That's me taking one for the virtual team, guys. Because I care.

Ahem.


Here's the finished Monkey Pack:

Here's his back view:

You'd think all that fur would get caught in the zipper, but so far I haven't had any snags at all. I think having a plastic zipper (as opposed to metal) helps.

And finally, the best part of all: a photo shoot with John wearing a ridiculous monkey backpack. WOOT WOOT!!

Ok, so this shot doesn't really show off the backpack, but... mmrowr. Am I right? Besides, John won't let me post any of his kissy-face "Blue Steele" shots. Harrumph.

(I also told him if he ended up on Sad Etsy Boyfriends it was NOT going to be my fault.)

Ok, ok, here's a better back view of the monkey pack:


Isn't he cute? (The monkey, I mean. Heh.) The head flops back quite nicely - it helps to remove some of the stuffing in the back of the head and neck area to allow for this.

So there you have it!

Mr. Monkey was really just my prototype, though; he's not quite geeky enough for me. (Although he's ridiculously comfortable, like wearing a giant fuzzy vest.) So next on my chopping block is a large Mickey plush from Hong Kong Disney. I'm also seriously considering hunting down a Hugga Bunch doll - remember those? Or a large Rainbow Brite - although her plastic head might be too hard. Hm...

Help me out, guys: what other geeky and/or 80's era dolls would make great backpacks or purses? (Pound Puppy Purse, perhaps?)

*****

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