Jozef's Birthday Presents - The Turtle

I always love to scope out the internet for free patterns for future use as a way to take a break from my work here at Fabulous Pants. It was during one of these sessions that I ran across the patter for the other gift I made for Jozef's birthday this weekend. I found this really sweet little turtle toy that has a removable shell. It was available for free at the time, but is now available for a small $4 fee at Wilsons' Shop on Etsy. This project was a great stash buster for me as I could recycle out some great scraps from other toys to make this one up. One thing that I would say about this pattern as well as other patterns is to read all the directions first before beginning. I did not, so I missed the instruction to add a seam allowance to the pattern before cutting. This may have changed from the free pattern on the blog to the new sold pattern, but I would recommend that you read all directions first for all patterns you work with rather than doing what I do, just diving in and making adjustments later. The turtle turned out cute from tipi scraps and pelican left overs. I made it a more traditional and unimaginative green and yellow tone in color. The pieces to work on this were relatively simple:



They were easy to cut out and would have worked much more easily I am sure if I would have added the seam allowance. Because I did not do that, I had to do some hand sewing in the head region to make it work out well due to the short seams I was trying to pull off to make it more like it should have been.

This project took me literally three hours to do. It was a fun and quick sew. I would highly recommend this pattern to any level sewer, even extreme beginners. The only tricky part to it was the head seams to create the shaping, and even that would be a good thing for a beginning sewer to tackle to learn shaping. Here is the finished turtle in all its cuteness.





Hopefully Jozef loves this one too!