*****UPDATE**** If you’d like an adorable denim whale but aren’t up for making it yourself, you can buy one from my shop here**************************************************
I don’t claim to be a seamstress, in fact my sewing skills are novice at best. But when I stumbled upon a denim whale on Pinterest the other day I couldn’t help but make a denim whale for my baby girls nursery.
The inspiration came from a whale I pinned off of this Finnish blog. The pictures were great, but she didn’t give a pattern. In fact she noted in her post that she draws her own pattern right on the fabric. That wasn’t going to work for me. I love to draw, but I also love to erase and redraw until I’ve got something just the way I like it. The idea of erasing on denim didn’t really appeal to me.
So I drew my pattern out on notebook paper {which you can see pictured in my tutorial} and made a few changes. I wanted my whale to be a little more friendly, so a gave him some cartoon-ish features and made his lest anatomically correct.
The pattern isn’t perfect, not by a long shot. But I’ve used it to make two whales so far and it’s worked great for me. The following tutorial is of the second whale I made, the dark blue guy pictured above. I did a few variations at my little brother’s request and I ended up loving the changes.
My second whale has topstitched fins that we filled with fluff. The first whale has floppy fins and tail, which I think suits him just fine. Also, on the second go around I topstitched where the belly attaches to the top of the body. This gave him a very distinguished, whale-like upper lip which I liked better than the embroidered smile I gave the light blue whale.
Remember, my pattern is free. Feel free to use it to make whales for yourself, to give away, or go ahead and use it to make whales to sell. However, please do not claim the pattern itself as your own or sell it in any way. Also, if you repost this idea on your own blog please link it back to my blog and the original pattern. Enjoy!
