When I received this incredible envy of strike off fabrics from Mini Me’s by TNT yesterday I knew immediately I wanted to make some dinosaur booties! (Check out Mini Me’s by TNT’s current preorder here.)
Mini Me’s by TNT‘s current preorder round has some great dinosaur prints in greens, blues, browns, purples and pinks! I received an adult sized dinosaur panel, a blue/green/brown/black stripe and this awesome plaid. In this post, I’m going to talk about the Dinosaur panel and stripes.
I made this two piece outfit from an adult sized panel and a fat half of stripes. I loved the Pterodactyl graphic on the panel and the “Dino Puns are Pteroble” wording! Most dinosaur prints seem to include Tyrannosaurus so it was fun to have a different dino on this one. When using adult sized panels, I have the advantage of an entire fat half of fabric surrounding the middle graphic!
The only challenge in sewing adult sized panels for babies is finding a pattern that will accomodate the graphic size itself! Sometimes you can trim away a bit of the graphic with no worries, but I did not want not want to lose a bit of the wording on this cute panel! GYCT’s Primary Tee and Dress pattern to the rescue! I love that this tee is a little roomier than most of my patterns for Kai. Not only does the neck opening slip easily over his head, but it will accommodate adult sized panels easily, even in the smallest 12 month size like I sewed! And there are so many options as well – short sleeves, long sleeves, even a dress! Not only was I able to cut the front of my shirt from the panel, but I was also able to cut the back of the shirt, the waistband (not included in this pattern) and waistband and cuffs for the pants! I love using the fabric from a panel in this way on coordinating pieces to tie an entire outfit together!
For the pants, I just wanted a simple design as I already was going to have a lot going on with the added hat and booties. I chose the Max Joggers by Max & Meena. These are a quick and easy sew and I love the dark green cuffs/waistband cut from the panel scraps.
On to the dinosaur booties! I already had the PetitBoo slipper pattern so I just needed to add dinosaur toes when sewing. But the question is… how many toes does a dinosaur have? Thank goodness for google! The consensus seemed to be that most dinosaurs have three functional toes. Now Pterodactyls do also have a back talon, but since I planned to use these with all the dino outfits, I stuck to the basic three!
To add the toes, I just cut out twelve toenails from marine vinyl. I then sandwiched two together at a time (wrong sides together) and top stitched around to create six toenails – three for each bootie. When sewing the heel to the toe of the slipper, I simply added the toenails. I made the booties from a solid green fleece and did not use interfacing on any of the pieces since I was using fleece as the lining as well. I was very pleased with the finished booties even without interfacing. They really did not need it made from fleece.
If you’re going to have dinosaur booties, of course you will need a dinosaur hat to go with them! For this hat, I started with the Patterns for Pirates free pattern, the Teenie Beanie. I modified it just slightly to add a seam down the center back in order to slip in my row of three spikes. These were also made from marine vinyl in the same manner as the toes but are connected at the bottom.
I just freehand drew a row of three spikes to create a pattern piece and then cut two of them from the vinyl and sewed wrong sides together to create one spike piece. I then sandwiched it between the hat layers when sewing the front to back seam. I made the hat from the same fleece as the booties.
And there you have it… one baby dinosaur!
Dino Panel and Stripe Fabric is currently on preorder at Mini Me’s by TNT
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