Dinosaur Suit including Tutorial!

Today I managed to make a dinosaur suit for my nephew for Christmas. I'm trying to get on top of the Christmas presents now so we don't end up with a huge bill and manic Christmas Shopping at the end of the year! So now I've managed to pin down 3 Christmas Presents :-)

I'll show you here the finished product and if you want to know how to make it then keep reading (I hope I make sense in this tutorial! I really was just flying by the seat of my pants so feel free to adjust anything to make yours even better!)

DINOSAUR SUIT TUTORIAL

You will need:

1 meter of sparkly fabric (if you buy stuff that isn't see-through you probably won't need the lining)

1 meter of lining (I just used an old sheet)

1 button

small amount of fabric for binding and neck attachment bit (this is not mandatory either)

1x 30cm square of felt (I got mine from Arthurs for $1.50) which you cut into triangles.

Method:

1. Cut 2x wings - one left one, one right one in the shape as you see below .. just make up how big you want it depending on the child .. I was just copying off a suit I already had, but making it larger.

2. pin down the outside of the wing (right sides together) and sew

3. pin what you've sewn open and top stitch it flat. Now you should have 2 wings like the picture below

4. Now you need to cut the hood pieces .. mine could have done with being a little big larger (hence why I added binding to the front .. to make it a little bit bigger) .. cut 2x liner pieces, and I actually cut 4x sparkly hood bits to make the hood a little bit more sparkly.

5. fold the straight edge of the hood in half and about halfway up put a pin in so you can sew a tuck. This should help the hood curve around the head better.

6. Pin all the layers of the hood in the correct order, right sides together and sew. Now your hood should look like the pic below. At this stage I would try it on the child (or in my case, a similar sized child) and adjust if it needs it. Now you are ready to put the spikes on.

NOTE: You could add the spikes by pinning them inside the layers at the start of number 6. I would do that next time around, but it does hold it well if you just unpick spaces for the spikes afterwards

7. Fold a little tuck on a spike (it stays pretty well with felt). Sit the spike on the hood to see how much you have to unpick (if you haven't put them in already) and then unpick enough for it to fit in between the layers, pin, and sew.

Do this for all the hood spikes .. mine fitted 4 on.

8. Now add some elastic on the tips of the wings to go around the child's wrist. Double fold the top of the wing, encapsulating the elastic and sew right along the top of the wing. 

9. Go over the elastic a few times to hold it in place.

10. Make some binding for the front of the hood. This just means cutting a strip of fabric and ironing it in half.

11. Pin binding to the front of the hood, and sew.

12. Fold and pin flat and top stitch.

13. See pic for inside view of what it should look like.

NOTE: If you didn't want to do the binding, just fold over the front of the hood double and sew - I only didn't do this because my hood was too small to do that (and it turned out quite nice anyway!)

NOTE#2: If you buy binding - or make binding so that you cut a strip, fold the edges together, then fold it in half - you could put this over the front of the hood and make it look tidy from both sides .. I only just thought of this now oops! haha

14. Sew the 'spine' of the wings together at the top just a little bit - about 3cm down

15. Pin the hood onto the wings and sew. See pic below as to what it should look like now.

16. Now sew the rest of the spikes (with a tuck folded in them) down the spine. I pinned all the spine including the spikes and did it in one go

17. use 2x equilateral triangles (triangles with 3 sides the same length) and put the either side of the tail and top stitch all around the edge to hold it on and togther. 

18. If you want you can add a strap for around the front of the neck (which is handy if the hood is off so it doesn't fall off). You could add ties or velcro but I used a button for mine - I made a strap out of binding material (please excuse bad button hold sewing!!).

19. Now you're done! Pat yourself on the back :-)

20. get recipient or willing model to wear it and post about it on your blog! 

I hope that was helpful .. feel free to ask questions and feel free to share this tutorial :-)

Sima J