Gone Fishin' Cat Toy

This is the tute for Goldie the gold fish toy I made for the Midas touch challenge at Iron Craft. The Cat loves this toy so much I have to hide it from him or he will drag it around the house and get the stick caught on stuff and knock stuff over.

I used orange felt as well as a teeny bit of black for the eyes, two orange pom poms, duct tape, one set of chop sticks but you could use a wooden dowel, A straw if you use chop sticks, three 2 yard lengths of yarn braided together, scissors, a jingle bell, stuffing, the pattern, pins and a needle, embroidery floss in a coordinating color and thread in a matching color.

You will also need the pattern which I tried to mark clearly to indicate where everything goes.  Print the pattern at full page to get it the correct size which is 11 x 8.5 aka a standard sheet of copy paper. 

Cut two pieces out for the body and the bottom fin and one piece out for the top fin. If you want to add scales with the embroidery floss do that now and remember that those are the right sides so they need to be inside when you are sewing.

Pin the pieces together with the fins and the yarn on the inside then sew along the area marked on the pattern in a dotted line. This is a fan tailed gold fish so she needs to have the two tail fin pieces separate. Leave it open at the tail end so you can turn it right side out then stuff it and put the bell in. Sew up the back with a whip stitch or a back stitch.

Now comes the eyes. Cut small circles out of the black felt then sew them onto the pom poms. Next sew the pom poms onto the area where the eyes would be. This gives Goldie bug eyes like any good fancy gold fish should have. 

Now onto attaching her to the fishing rod. I didn't have any dowels around when I made this project but I had just eaten some Chinese take out so I had a pair of chop sticks. I secured them with the flat ends together using tape then I strengthened them with a straw over the place where they were joined. I used blue painters tape there but you could use the duct tape as well. Tape over it several times to make it stronger.

I used gray duct tape because I couldn't find my pretty duct tape but with all the crazy colors and patterns out there you could use any color you want. I taped the string down first to make sure it would be secure while I was covering the chop sticks. I put the tape on at a diagonal so it would cover the sticks with a little more ease but I still had to finesse it a bit to get it flat and to cover the sticks.