Tonight you sleep with the fishes!

Or maybe you don’t. This felt softie is a slippery devil, a charmingly misleading enigma.

The pattern, when enlarged to 500 percent, makes an oversize herring—the perfect bedside body pillow, wooing heavy-lidded detectives into an uneasy slumber as they grasp for a solution to the crime, just out of reach, maybe somewhere in their gauzy dreams. As their attention is diverted, you slip out the back, Jack.

SUPPLIES

Scissors

Straight pins

Red polar fleece

Black felt for fins

Small scrap of white felt for eyes

Embroidery needle

Black and white embroidery floss

Red sewing thread

Sewing machine (optional)

Polyfill or other favorite stuffing

HOW TO

1. Enlarge the template 500 percent or to your desired size, then cut out the pattern pieces.

2. Pin the main body pattern pieces to the red fleece, then cut out.

3. Pin the fin and gill pattern pieces to the black felt and the eyes to the white felt, then cut out the pieces.

4. Using the black embroidery floss, sew a black iris on top of each white eye piece.

5. In long running stitches, embroider white stripes on all the fin pieces.

6. Appliqué the gills and eyes to both sides of the fish body.

7. Appliqué the pectoral fins to the fish body at the vertical seam.

8. Appliqué the tail fins on top of the fish’s body at the seam mark.

9. Lay the fish sections right sides down. Using red thread, attach the pelvic, anal, and dorsal fins to the insides of the fish at the seam lines.

10. Pin the body pieces together with the right sides facing.

11. Stitch the body together, using a ½-inch seam allowance and leaving a gap in the head area for stuffing. This step could be done by hand using a backstitch, but it will go much faster with a sewing machine.

12. Turn your fish right side out and stuff it with polyfill or your favorite stuffing.

13. Turn in the seam allowance at the stuffing gap and stitch the gap closed.