Delightful Dinos #1: Spike

Yay! After about a month of picking up and putting down this sewing project I finally finished the first of three Delightful Dino toys for Adam.  Meet Spike.  

I first saw the adorable sewing pattern on Etsy around Christmas time and purchased it online.  I know that the patterns for the three dinosaurs are straightforward and usually I hesitate to bother buying them for simple projects but I wanted to get to the sewing part as efficiently as possible, given the time constraints with a newborn.  Now I'm happy I did.  During one of Adam's naps a few weeks back I successfully cut out all of the fabrics and interfacing for all three dinosaurs (and finished the ironing - hooray!) so I'm optimistic I'll be posting about the other two dinos in no time.  Fingers crossed.

I purchased four cute fat quarters from Fabricland and used two different fabrics for each dinosaur. I like the colourful polka dots on the fabric for Spike's belly and foot pads.  Unfortunately I forgot to pick up wide ric rac to use along Spike's spine so instead I had to create my own triangular spikes using the same polka dot fabric. It was a bit more effort but turned out to be nice detailing.

I would have loved to use buttons for Spike's eyes and for attaching his legs to his body (as called out for in the pattern) but I'm a little paranoid about buttons being pulled off and becoming choking hazards so I put safety first.  Instead of buttons I just used blue thread to create circles for his eyes.  They don't stand out as much as I would have liked because of the busy fabric but they'll have to do.  

For the legs I tried to sew from the front right one straight through the body to the front left one (as instructed in the pattern) but my needles just aren't long enough to easily penetrate the body without a whole lotta squishing down. It was too tricky to control where the needle would emerge from on the other side...plus I kept running the risk of losing the needle altogether inside the body if it slipped out of my fingers.  In the end I settled for hand-stitching along the tops of each leg so that they flop around which is kind of fun.

Oh, and the best part? I took some of the wrapper paper from saltine crackers and stuffed it into Spike's body.  Now when you squeeze him he makes the crinkling sound that seems to be a common feature among many baby toys that we've received.  Perhaps I will add a bell to the next dino. Stay tuned!