SoleCrafts: Hedgehogs hedgehogs everywhere!

For the past 2- 3 years now my daughter has been obsessed with the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise. She has sonic shirts, sonic games, sonic plushies, wallet, bracelets, halloween costumes......She reads the fan fics, writes her own, watches the videos, reads the comics, plays the games.

So when her art teacher assigned a project and one of the animals to research was a hedgehog that is what she chose. It was whilst she was doing this project she found out that it was possible to keep hedgehogs as pets and so of course she decided that she needed one.

Now I've been thinking that we need a pet for a while but I was never willing to commit - I didn't want a dog - we'd need to fence the yard, be willing to take it for walks and I'm allergic to some. My husband was against a cat, and I whilst I would love one I could see all the downsides too, but when my daughter mentioned a hedghog I thought - you know maybe this would be a good pet for us. He's fairly well contained wouldn't be running around the whole house, no walking requirements - If we went on holidays he could be left with one of the kids friends for a week or so.

And so I told the kids to do some research. Find out how much it would cost, what care requirements are there etc. This was right at the beginning of the Covid-19 lockdown so the kids had plenty of time. They did all sorts of research assignments, found out everything they could - made up quizzes for each other so they could test their knowledge - it was really great to watch them.

And so they came to us one day with all their research and my husband and I talked it over and decided maybe we should do it. The kids had found their preffered purchase location and so we filled out their questionnaire, emailed it in and waited to hear back...and waited....and waited.....and it looked like we'd be waiting for months (they still haven't replied to us even though we followed up at least twice), but then one day I looked at a website for a place a bit further afield (about 2 hours away) and found that they had hedgehogs available right now......including this little guy who we fell in love with immediaately.

Ohh could it be possible? As well as being a USDA licensed breeder they also have a store dedicated to all things hedgehog and sell all the gear required (we had originally planned to order a hedgehog then purchase all we needed off amazon whilst waiting for it to be available), This meant that we could buy it right now and have it this week. After a bit more research into this place we decided to go for it and on May 1st the kids and I piled into the car for an outing.

We left early as I was worried that if there was traffic we could end up being late, but luckily there was none - we also had to make a quick stop at an auto shop since my windscreen wipers had died a little while ago and I had put of replacing them as we weren't using the car. A final stop at a rest are to change the wipers and we arrived at our destination a hour early. Since it was lunch time we popped into the drive through Maccas and bought ourselves lunch and ate it in the car parked outside the hedgehog shop. At 12:30pm we were allowed into the shops - we donned our masks (I made my daughters out of the scraps of hedgehog fabric from her shirt I made) and headed inside to pick up Star. He's a 6 week old hedgehog pinto in colour, mainly browny black but with one pink paw and one pink ear and lots of white quills scattered through (including a really cute white blaze on his butt). He has a black circle around one eye that makes it look like one eye is bigger than the other - and he is adorably cute!

We bought the Ultimate Cage set up that provided us with everything we needed including heat lamps wheel, igloo, carrier.

and then headed home with Star being passed from lap to lap the whole way.

We got him all settled into his new house and I realised I was going to have to do quite a bit of sewing to make it comfortable for him.

trying put his new food bowl.

They had provided paper bedding for him but I knew that I didn't want to use that so I pulled out all my scrap fleece and started sewing.

I made a liner that would cover the plastic bottom of his cage and go right up the sides and tie to the wire mesh. Originally this was just 1 layer of fleece, and then I added a cotton backing as well. I made two of these liners.

But after a couple of days he found out how to get up and underneath the liner and we found him a couple of mornings lying on the plastic bottom of the cage under the liner. My main worry about that was that he couldn't get himself out if he needed to so I changed tactics and made a different type of liner. This time I used 3-4 layers of fabric. Fleece on one side, heavy weight cotton on the other and in between a quilted sandwich - for my first one I used a premade quilted fabric two layers of cotton on either side of piece of batting, for the second one two layers of warm and natural quilted to a piece of heavy weight cotton. These were great until I washed them the first time and they shrunk...

I have to think about what I can try next.

The kids also got in on the action each of them making a little snuggle sack for snuggling with him.

These snuggle sack are simple - take 2 rectangles of fabric and sew them together on three sides, then put two of these together, right sides facing and sewing them together around the top, leaving a small opening to turn them right side out. Finally top stitch around the opening to close up that last hole.

I also made a snuggle sack, but I made mine with a bottom. Same steps as above, but after sewing the three sides together sew two triangles across the bottom to create a square base.

We had some wire shelving lying around ready to be thrown out, but decided instead to use some of it to make a little playpen for Star, but he kept trying to slip out of the cage, poking his head almost right through on a couple of occasions.

So I sewed together some scrap fabric to cover the wire and then made a floor from fabric as well.

We then wondered if it was too bright for the little guy during the day living inside his see through igloo, so I made a fleece cover to go over the top of it. I put 4 grommets in the top, attempting to align them with the air holes on the igloo for air flow.

And then one day I found a video tutorial on making your own stuffed hedgehog and that was it - the kids each wanted to make one. Watching the video, the toy she makes is pretty much 2 dimensional and we all wanted a 3D toy so I modified the pattern slightly, adding a gusset underneath the body and the head and a triangular gusset coming half way up the back. We used materials we had on hand so white fluff, beige fleece and brown micro suede. I made the pattern and J was the first to sew - he cut out all his pieces, I pinned them together and he sewed them (except the last seam I did that as he needed lunch but still wanted to get it finished). We turned him inside out and stuffed him - oh so cute. J hot glued on two black felt circles for eyes, I sewed up the hole and he was done.

Unfortunately he turned out a bit hunch back. The gusset up the back wasn't big enough so he now has a flat butt...but J loves him!

I wanted to modify the pattern before L made up hers so I tried a smaller version using just white fluff, white fleece and black fleece. This time I extended the back gusset full width up to the top of the back, tapering off to a point at his face.