Dinosaur Onesies (part 1)

We are going to backtrack here a couple, er, months... allll the way to November.

ok, you caught me, I am not positive about the month, but it was somewhere around then! It might have been September...

Give me a break, ok.

I had a baby shower to attend and wanted something cute, diy, and simple. I had recently seen dinosaur hoodies all over pinterest (and loved them! also, I wanted a dino hoodie for Jack), so I thought, 'how hard can a dinosaur onesie be? (and I can test the different methods before I make Jack's!)' The answer is: not difficult at all!

However, you'll soon realize that I am very good at making things much more complicated than necessary (yes, for the fun of it... though I do kick myself, sometimes, for it). It's a family trait. You will see what I mean in a bit

I followed (if you can call it following) two different routes... and now that I think of it, I may have made up the 2nd version based on this picture.

But, here's the first one:

This one was based loosely off of this really good tutorial. And I apologize, because my tutorial will not even compare!

Things you need:
- sewing machine (and all the things that go with that: needle (regular needle should work, but I used a special needle for knits), thread, electricity, etc)
- tissue paper
- a small amount of fleece (the original tutorial uses felt)
- baby onesie
- embroidery floss
- embroidery needle

1. fold your tissue in half and cut a triangle on the crease (keep the fold intact), the size you want your spikes to be. unfold it to find... a diamond!

2. (I'm sorry there are no pictures) trace your diamonds onto the fleece and cut enough to line the spine of the onesie. I used 9 on a 3-6 month onesie.

3. draw a line (oops, forgot to mention you need a pencil and straight edge) where you want the spine to run (you can fold it in half side-to-side to find the middle).

4. line up and pin your diamonds on the line, from top to bottom. sew straight up the middle of the diamonds, using a zig zag stitch to allow the knit to stretch.

5. now, here is where things got a bit more complicated. since I didn't use felt or stabilizer, I had to figure out how to attach the edges so that... you know... it actually looked like a dino spine. so I hopped on the ever-so-trusty pinterest and searched for some nice embroidery stitch to finish off the edges (because I couldn't just use a regular blanket stitch, or sew them with a straight line on the sewing machine ... no, that would have been too easy and quick!

6. so I found this tutorial for an armenian edging stitch and spent way too long stitching along all 18 edges.

7. and since I seemed to think that I needed to spend MORE time on this onesie, I added some cute accents on the front. But let me tell you, steps 6 and 7 totally made this one! :) So much better than a straight stitch :)

Then, since I don't have a baby, I forced an unhappy Jack into it to model for me. Let me just melt your heart for a minute:

also, meet Jack!

So, I was happy with that one, but I didn't like how the spikes didn't all stand up very straight... also the stitching was a lot of work.

However, this post is longer than I expected, so stay tuned until next week for the 2nd tutorial. Again without step-by-step pictures.

See you next week!