The Little Felt Baby Penguin is a sewing pattern & instructions to hand sew an adorable baby penguin. As you may have guessed, I modeled it after the very iconic emperor penguin baby with its chubby light-grey body and a cute white face surrounded by a black ‘helmet’. When finished, the Little Felt Baby Penguin is approximately 7.5-cm (3″) tall.
And, of course this baby penguin needs a parent penguin! So Muumade also has a matching Little Felt Penguin as shown in the image above! Their sewing patterns can be purchased separately or together as a set from my online shop.
Have you ever wondered why emperor penguin chicks look the way they do? Their fluffy down must be warm, but it is not warm enough to keep them alive without the protection of their parents’ brood pouches in the Antarctic. Also, their down is not waterproof, so they have to keep away from the water until they acquire juvenile plumage. In terms of color, it is easy to imagine that light grey helps them blend in with their snowy surroundings.
But what about their black head and white mask? I’ve read that their striking markings might serve to help their parents to find them in their white-grey icy world. These two color characteristics seem contradictory, but I guess and hope that their combination works to their advantage. One thing is certain, that it makes emperor penguin babies irresistibly cute!
As I already mentioned on the Little Felt Penguin’s page, male emperor penguins protect their partner’s eggs on top of their feet for two months in freezing (-40°C, -40°F) temperatures! Father penguins are known to form colonies during this incubation period, gathering together to keep warm. These colonies are located on sea ice, frozen ocean platforms connected to land or ice shelves. Unfortunately, recent warmer temperatures due to climate change are breaking up these ice platforms earlier than they used to, causing penguin chicks to fall into the sea before they are ready for the water. It is horrifying to even imagine it, but this tragedy happened to 14 of the 66 known emperor penguin colonies in 2023! For those of you interested in learning more about this amazing sea bird and their habitat, here is a list of top 10 facts about emperor penguins.
This download item is available from my online shop, muumade.etsy.com. You can also click on any photo above to go to the item page and download the instructions instantly upon purchase.
You may also be interested in some other animals from my collection:
