Make A Nice Plushie Athame and Chalice For Your Little Witch

These instructions and patterns are my own intellectual property which I gladly share with you, but please be nice and do not use them for profit!

These sets make amazing Wiccaning or Pagan Baby Blessing gifts, or for when your little one starts getting interested in your altar, or just for funsies! I have made several over the years for my son and for friends, and they are always a big hit.

Skill Level: beginner

basic sewing

Materials

pattern printed and cut out

3 sheets of craft felt in appropriate colors

Polyfil stuffing

sewing machine & thread [optional, you can hand-sew everything if you have to]

hand needle and embroidery floss OR fabric paint

a pen for marking material and to help with turning and stuffing

Download & Print the PDF pattern here: ToolsPattern

*Adjust scale as needed to print on full page.

*If you want larger tools, use a copy machine to enlarge the image.

Step 1: Prep



Cut out all your pattern pieces on the line. Note: there is only one Diety image, it will be turned to make a Triple moon as well as the Horned moon.

Step 2: Trace The Pieces

Choose your colors for each piece. I suggest doing the Chalice blue, and the Athame grey with a black or brown handle. The felt with the embedded glitter looks great for the Athame blade, but is not appropriate if making this set for a child under 2 years.

Determine which side of the felt you want to be showing – RIGHT SIDE [I like the flatter/non-fuzzy side to the be inside – WRONG SIDE because its easier to mark on] and trace the pattern pieces on the WRONG SIDE of the felt.

TIP: Use a light color pen, enough that you can see it but will not bleed through to the other side. If you have a disappearing ink pen meant for sewing, use that.

TIP: do not place your patterns directly side-by-side. You will need to leave room for seams, so trace the pieces at least 1″ apart.

Tracing the Chalice with disappearing ink pen. I only had this dark purple felt for tutorial purposes, and its a bit too dark to see the lines. This is not the ideal material for this project, but its what I had on-hand.

For the Athame, you will need ONE piece of the dark handle material and then 2 pieces of the light blade material.

To get the handle material, simply hang the blade part of the pattern off of the felt piece, as pictured:

Tracing the black handle of the Athame.

Step 3: Cutting Out the Pieces

VERY IMPORTANT: Do not cut ON the lines you have traced. These will be your sewing lines. You need to cut about 1/4″ around the lines you drew. It does not have to be perfect, you will trim these up in later steps.

Cut out all your pieces.

You should be left with 5 total pieces of material.

I realize it’s difficult to see the tracing lines here but you get the picture. Leave room for sewing!

Step 4: Diety & Detail Embellishments

This step has a lot of room for personalization, you do not have to use the Diety representations I have included, or any at all for that matter.

You can either embroider the designs on [MUST DO THIS if making for a child under 2 years for safety reasons] or just use fabric paint to put the design on [NOT appropriate for young kids] I will do one of each to show you.

You will be adding these designs onto the tip of one Athame blade, the Athame handle, and one side of the Chalice

First, you have to figure out where the center of your material piece is. Looking at the WRONG SIDE where you have your trace lines, stick a pin through the very center of the pattern.

When you flip the material over to the RIGHT SIDE you should have a pin line in the center like this:

Marked centers with pins shown here on the RIGHT SIDE

Place the design patterns on the RIGHT SIDE and very lightly trace around them, or dot around them so that you can see the outline.

Note the pin showing I have it centered to the sew lines on the back, NOT centered to the cut-out shape as viewed from the front.

Embroidery colors are your choice, I like silver details on the Chalice and gold details on the Athame OR blue & green details on the Chalice [for Goddess elements water and earth] and red & yellow details on the Athame [for God elements of fire and air]

Use a back-stitch to embroider your design. Note that the smaller your stitches, the more defined your design will be.

Secure your start and finish tails with a tight knot.

If you are making these for a child under 2 years: add a tiny tiny tiny dot of tacky craft glue [or white glue] over your start and stop tail knots for safety to keep the embroidery from pulling out.

The Athame also gets details on the blade to make it look double edged. Stitch a line up the center, and then V at the top to make the pointed tip.

The metalic thread makes this look weird in a photo, but those stitches are closer together than they seem. I did this really quickly so its not as straight as it should be lol. Showing here with the pattern on top so you can see the shape better. The Athame blade detail is from a different set where I did the elemental colors.

To do the Triple Moon on the Chalice, turn the design sideways and trace around it, then turn it the opposite way and trace the other crescent on.

The Chalice also gets the oval cup opening at the top.

This is what it looks like with fabric paint, I used yellow here so it showed up better for the photo.

Step 5: Construction

First you need to attach the Athame handle piece to the blade. Line up the the two pieces with both RIGHT SIDES [the decorated sides] facing up. Use the sewing lines on the back to help with this.

Stitch a line across the top of the handle piece, as close to the edge as you can comfortably get.

Then trim the excess white blade material piece off of that back to reduce the thickness. [This is a necessary step or turning the piece when finished will be very hard]

Cut about 1/2″ from the stitched line.

Trimming the back piece off reduces the thickness and really helps when you are turning the Athame after sewing.

Now you are going to stack the Athame and Chalice material with RIGHT SIDES together. Line up the drawn sew-lines as best you can, make sure your Diety designs and details are centered.

You will have the sewing lines on top [on WRONG SIDE of the back piece] as your sewing guide.

Starting at the bottom of one side, sew all the way around the tool **LEAVING THE VERY BOTTOM OPEN FOR TURNING AND STUFFING**

Use your scissors to trim around the seam edges and remove the excess material

Athame sewn up – bottom open, extra seams trimmed

Chalice sewn up – bottom open, extra seams NOT trimmed yet

Step 6: Turning



VERY VERY VERY carefully turn your tools inside out. Don’t pull to hard, work the material up into itself.

Seriously I cannot stress how carefully you need to do this lol. Be patient!

TIP: the Chalice is the most difficult because of the narrow center and wide top. Take your time, go slowly!

TIP: use the end of your pen to help poke through the narrow parts.

Chalice mid-turning.

When you get it turned roughly, the shape will not be well defined yet.

Shapeless Chalice

Use your pen again to reach in and really push out on all the seams to define the shape.

Shaped Chalice, see the difference?

Do the same thing for the Athame – turn and shape it.

Almost done!

Step 7: Stuffing & Finishing

Stuff each tool with polyfil [or other filler of your choice]

TIP: use that trusty pen again to get the filler all the way up in the too

The filler will settle some with use, so its a good idea to stuff it very firmly.

Once stuffed to your liking, fold under the bottom flaps.

TIP: since the stuffing is in there, I find pinning the edges helps sew up the bottom better

Then just sew across the bottom with your machine, get as close to the edge as you can.

TIP: back-stitch at the start and stop for stability, or sew the line twice.

sewing it up!

ALL DONE!!!

TUTORIAL SET ALL FINISHED!

SOME OTHER EXAMPLES OF FINISHED TOOL SETS:

These I did with the elemental colors mentioned in the text.

And these are my son’s tools, they were the first ever that I made. They are VERY well played with, as you can see haha. I actually cut out the designs with felt and appliqued them on for his. A bit more labor intensive but just to give you an idea of all the variations you can create with the pattern template.

I truly hope you enjoyed this tutorial and crafting huggable tools for your little witch 🙂 Please feel free to contact me directly if you have any questions or suggestions for this tutorial!

May all your days be blessed,

Rev. Emairelhd Eartheart



emairelhd [at] yahoo [dot] com