A Mermaid’s Tail

If you follow me on Pinterest, you might have noticed a board for “Things that Piper wants me to make her”.  My 4-year-old granddaughter LOVES Pinterest.  We spend “quality” time going through all the pins for mermaids, assorted softies, and cat-themed pillows.  

So when we came across the pin for this mermaid tail, she really thought I should make it for her.  

 

The website, Grosgrain, has the tutorial and pattern for the tail.  Typically I follow the instructions the first time I make a project then tweak it to my satisfaction on the next effort.

I followed this pattern pretty closely but I had to make a few changes.

First, I didn’t use the Soft N Comfy fabric she suggests because somewhere in the tutorial she also calls it Minky.  I love Minky.  But without a walking foot on the sewing machine, it’s the devil to sew.  It’s VERY slippery.  And I’m borrowing my daughter-in-law’s machine for this project and it doesn’t have a walking foot.  So I bought an anti-pill fleece that was on sale at Jo-anne’s instead.

Fleece is soft, very forgiving, and doesn’t fray.  So soft, that as soon as I pulled the fabric out of the bag to show Piper and Adley, they laid right down on it and rolled around. Fleece also washes nicely so I let them have a little party.

Second, I don’t have a printer here, so I wasn’t able to use any of the patterns that came with the tutorial.  I just drew the fins on a newspaper and used it for my pattern.

The final big change was that I did not hand sew the waist fin onto the tail. When I’m making anything for a kid, I try to do all machine sewing.  It’s a LOT sturdier. I even double stitched all of the seams.  Anything I make for Piper is well-loved and well-used.  

I sewed the waist fin into the inside of the mermaid tail then turned it to the right side.

I then attempted to stitch the waist fin to right side of the tail and broke the needle.  Whoops! The sewing machine I’m using is very powerful so I was really surprised it couldn’t get through all those layers.  So I had to do a little hand stitching just so the waist fin would stay on the right side and not flip back to the inside.

And how did Piper like it?