Under the Sea

In my last blog, I talked about needing to make a play set for my granddaughter, but I wasn't sure what to make.  I was talking to the mom to be a couple of days ago and she gave me a great idea.  She suggested doing something with an ocean theme.  I thought that would be doable.  I knew right away that I wanted to make this set on the machine as opposed to knitting.  I had one pattern for a fish, and I thought I had a pillow pattern for a whale or dolphin.  I almost could not find that pattern, and after I did find it, I found out that the only thing that was in the envelope was the directions.  I planned on using the larger dolphin as a storage for the smaller animals, so I just looked at the pattern and made my own pattern.  I didn't even follow the directions, because I was not going to make it into a pillow.  I decided to put a zipper in the bottom so toys could be easily put in and taken out of the dolphin.  I found my one pattern, a fish.  Then, I went online and looked at some images of sea creatures.  I wanted to make five animals like I do for the play mats, and I decided on a lobster, a turtle, a seahorse, and a sea star to go along with the fish.  I had to make up patterns for all of these animals. It was sort of fun, but challenging because I can't always figure out how to make things fit together to accomplish the effect that I want.  I have been making a few of the small animal heads for the huggy pals that I just finished last week, so I was able to come up with what I wanted.  Kim had said that the kids seem to like the little felt animals that I have made in the past, so I decided to make most of them out of felt.  That works for me, because felt is great to sew with.  It doesn't slip or fray and it actually is quite easy to turn and stuff because it is a little stiffer.  The animals are not as soft, but what I really wanted to get, were animals that all had some kind of easy thing for a baby to grasp.  As you will see, these little animals (between 5 and 9 inches) all have small, thin things to grab onto.  I used felt that I had available with all of the animals, except for the lobster.  I had a lot of the shiny red material left over from when I converted the graduation robes into boxer robes.  It was perfect for a lobster and also gives a different feel for this little animal.  Here they are: Creatures from under the sea.....

Full set of Creatures from under the Sea.

The lobster has biased tape loops for the legs and felt antennas. This is the only one not made from felt.

This is the only one made from a pattern that I already had and did not have to make on my own. It is the smallest...just five inches from the nose to the tip of the longest tail fin.  I wanted to make all the animals a different color, but somehow, I managed to get two light blue animals, the fish and the seahorse. They do look different, though, because this one has the darker blue fins and the seahorse has stripes of lots of colors along the body.

This sea star was the easiest of all to make.  It has an orange back.  I love it.

The sea horse was a little time consuming, but really quite easy to make.  I decided to use some of my scraps from the cuttings on the other animals to make stripes along the body.  When I was putting on the stripes, I started higher than I had planned, and so things did not fit right in the middle.  I was able to make the adjustment by just leaving the one stripe blue like the body.  I really like this little guy, but he isn't very cuddly...he is very stiff. He has some really good grabbing parts.

I wasn't planning on making a turtle because I have already made one for the family that is getting this play set, but I like turtles, so I decided to make one.  Again, I was able to use some scraps to make triangular spots on the back of the shell.  However, when it was sewed together, the spots were kind of small.  I decided to connect them with an embroidered pattern.

This little octopus turned into being more difficult than I had expected.  It was so hard to try to sew that little body with all the legs stuffed inside.  I had to do just sew the bottom, head, and one side with the machine, and then I had to turn it right side out and hand sew the other side after stuffing the head and body. If I ever do this one again, I think I will do it differently.  I will put all the legs as one piece with a flat circle in the center, which I will hand sew to the bottom of the body.  Oh well, I still think this one is pretty cute.

This shows the flat, empty dolphin. I put a zipper in the bottom.  There is plenty of room for these five little toys, and for many more toys, too. This is made out of fleece and is really soft.

This shows what it looks like with the toys stuffed inside.  Like I said, they don't take up much room, so there is plenty of room for storing more of the little animals I have made in the past.

I had a lot of fun with this project.  I can't believe that it only took me two days to do.  The hardest part is always the cutting.  It takes so long to find the right material for everything.  Since I hardly every throw anything away, I have lots of scraps that I can go through to get things for little animals like these guys.  The fleece for the dolphin was some that I bought one time on sale.  I knew it would come in handy some day.  It was too small to work as a blanket, but it was just the perfect size for this project.