A basket of white fibrefill next to a sage elephant softie and a hemostat

Stuffing The notebook

Stuffing thin arms, legs and tails without lumps

Tools and technique for stuffing narrow softie limbs firmly and evenly, so they don't go lumpy or floppy at the joint.

Pinned up on

Big bodies are easy to stuff. The difficulty is a leg 2 cm wide and 12 cm long. Push a wad of filling down it and you get a hard lump at the foot, an empty middle, and a joint that folds over. The cure is in the size of each piece of filling and in the tool.

Tease the fibrefill first

You need

  • fibrefill

Pull the filling apart into fluffy, walnut-sized pieces before you start, then pull each piece thinner again as you use it. Compressed fibre straight from the bag is what makes lumps. Loose fibre bonds with the piece before it into a smooth fill.

Use forceps, not your fingers

You need

  • hemostat

A hemostat grips a small tuft and carries it right to the end of a narrow limb, then releases it with a click. Your finger cannot reach, and a pencil pushes the filling into a ball. Hemostats are sold for fly-tying and for crafts, and they also help with turning.

Fill the tip, then work back

You need

  • hemostat
  • chopstick

Place the first few small tufts right in the tip of the foot or paw and press them into the corners with the chopstick. Then add each new tuft against the last one, a little at a time, and press it gently into place. Roll the limb between your palms every few centimetres to even it out.

Decide on the joint

You need

  • nothing extra

For a limb that should bend and dangle, stop stuffing 1.5 cm before the top and stitch a line across it by hand or machine. That makes a hinge. For a limb that should stand, stuff right to the top and pack the top hardest. Firm stuffing at the hip or shoulder is what stops a toy from sitting slumped.

Check for hollows by feel

You need

  • your fingertips

Run your thumb and finger along the whole limb. Any soft hollow can be filled now by pushing a thin tuft in from the open end and steering it there with the chopstick. Once the limb is sewn to the body, it can’t.

A slightly over-stuffed limb settles nicely after a week of play. An under-stuffed one only gets floppier.