June was assigned to do a biographical presentation on Jane Goodall. She did all the research and got the presentation ready herself, but needed assistance with her prop. She’d learned that Goodall was inspired to get into primate research partly because of a stuffed chimp she had as a child, name Jubilee. We tried to find a chimpanzee stuffy online, but came up dry. All of the stuffed animals listed as chimpanzees were clearly not chimpanzees (once we knew what to look for). This would never do, so we decided to make one ourselves.

We looked for sewing patterns and pictures for inspiration, but these weren’t much help either. In the end, we had to resort to using an AI to generate a simple picture that we could hack into a sewing pattern. Here’s what we ended up using:

We printed it out, traced it onto some brown felt, and got to work!

This was also an excuse to get our new (old) sewing machine in running order, which we did. In the end, I think Jubillee Jr. turned out pretty well. There are some weird proportions (I always make things too skinny when I make a plan that involves turning shapes inside out), but overall it could’ve been a lot worse:

The presentation was a success:

Oh, and here’s Jane with her Jubillee: