Kitten softie

I made a cat softie today, in memory of my old friend.  He passed away a few years ago.  We lived together for 15 years, it was so very sad when he had to go.
This blog is dedicated to him, his name was Incifinci.  He was a lovely, gentle black cat with beautiful, big eyes.

Last night I made a template after playing with different shapes for a few hours.  I wanted something really cute, but simple, not too big either.  This is my last sketch:

Then today I made it up in a lovely blue/grey check fabric. 

A silly mistake I made: of course I couldn't turn the fabric to the right side with the tail attached to the body like that.  I had to separate it, then it was okay.

Here it is, ready for stuffing.   The picture doesn't show the proper colour, it was a bit dark I think.  The fabric is a nice blue one. I left a small opening at the bottom, about 3 cm, but next time I'll leave a bigger one.

I used polyfill, and a chopstick to get the filling into every corner. 

Then I cut out the facial features from felt and attached them with thread.  I embroidered the whiskers, only on one side as I got distracted.  Have to finish it tomorrow.  Here it is, almost done:

I'll try to put the template on sometime the next days, though I think it's pretty straightforward.