The Octopus
June 27, 2026
Emily made Mr. M the cutest octopus costume for Halloween last year. She worked so hard on it and it turned out so well. She didn’t want that to be the end of it so she asked me if I could turn it into a stuffed animal. Lucky for me, I have a very talented friend who makes the most amazing patterns for stuffed creatures: sharks, hippos, whales, hedgehogs, penguins (you can check them out HERE)! And she also has one for an octopus.
Working on this octopus felt a little like working with a real one. Those legs kept curling around anything and everything and I had to manipulate them constantly to keep them under control. Anyone watching me wrangle this stuffed octopus would have been laughing their head off.
The first order of business was to unstuff the top couple of inches out of each of the legs so that I could sew them all together in a circle. Once they were in a circle, I restuffed them and sewed them shut. This meant that the legs could still flop around individually like real ones. If I had kept them open and suffed them with the body the legs would have been completely rigid.
I made an eight sided cone for the underside so that each leg would have a corresponding section. I stuffed the head and then sewed the underside in place by hand. With everything so firm and full of stuffing it was the only way.
It turns out that a fabric cone can just as easily pop into the opposite shape and point down rather than up. To keep this from happening, I sewed a string inside from the top of the cone to the top of the head. It’s doing a great job of keeping the underside tucked up.
Then there are the eyes. They are totally brilliant. Rita is a genius. They really make the octopus. Too bad I’m not as thorough as Rita. I failed to install the safety eyes correctly and Mr. M has already muscled one right off. And he did it in under 24 hours. Now this creature has to come back here to the doll hospital so I can fix it up properly.
I can’t wait to find out what Mr. M names this octopus! Any guesses?