All's whale that ends whale...

Ok, you can groan at my terrible joke... but it'll make sense if you read this post! This is what I made yesterday...

The seed for this beast was actually sewn about 6 years ago when I made a t-shirt for my eldest son. It was made from an old pair of jeans that had seen better days and featured a whale made from the denim, with the metal zip as the teeth and a tiny rivet for it's eye - how's that for recycling?! The whale's elongated body kind of stretched around the side, so that it's tail was on the back. It was so cool, I've searched high and low for that t-shirt so that I could show a photo, but - no joy! The zipped mouth idea stayed with me however, and I've finally incorporated it in something else - a cushion! I really wanted to use a bold, bright printed fabric - maybe turquoise and royal blue - and with a zingy orange zip, but as yet haven't found the right one. And me being Mrs Impatient, I had to make it, so this plain cotton fabric had to do for now!

Originally I was going to insert the zip properly - with my first attempt I actually cut the fabric across where the mouth was going to go... but this gave me a real headache! The long edges were no problem, but I couldn't figure out how to finish the corners without using darts....which looked rubbish! I persevered though - and decided to stitch the zip straight on to the right side of the fabric - much easier and therefore much quicker which is always a good thing.

I stitched some contrast polka dot fabric (cut just slightly smaller than the zipper) to the back of it so that when you undo the zip, a nice red 'mouth' is revealed! And I didn't even need a zipper foot on the sewing machine as I didn't stitch close to the teeth.

For some reason the button eyes in were coming out grey in my photos, when in fact they are a lovely emerald colour - and attached with some orange thread...

And I sewed a layer of wadding into the polka dot fin to make it a bit more 3 dimensional...

I'm quite pleased with Wally - and I can see me having another go in different fabrics - as and when I find them. This one is for sale in my Folksy shop.

Finally, I just want to say thank you for all comments left lately... this can be a bit of a lonely job sometimes - but getting feedback from you guys motivates me no end! Back soon!