It's Pinspired Friday! {A Whale of a Good Time!}

Hey everyone! It's Friday, so that can only mean one thing...

Yep, it's Pinspired Friday! Sorry about how late in the day this post is, but hey, better late than never eh? I was struggling to find a little... pinspiration (ba dum ching) this morning and then I stumbled across this pin:

And I was amazed at how cute and life-like the whale was... perfect for a little boy! But I don't have any little boys... and then it hit me. CHRISTMAS! BOOM. And thus, a perfect little gift for my nephew was born.

Before I begin my little tale, I would like to thank Mevrouw Walvis over at Valaan Villapaita for providing the inspiration. She does not provide a pattern as unfortunately, some people took advantage of how awesome this whale was and decided to copy it almost exactly and sell it, without giving her credit. I think I was lucky enough to get the walkthrough pictures, and for that I thank her. Please check out all of her original pictures and walkthrough over at http://valaanvillapaita.blogspot.com/2011/05/tee-se-itse-valas.html.

Back to my story...

So I click on through to the tutorial... and it's all in Finnish. Lovely photos, but my Finnish is a little rusty, as in non-existent. Google Translate here I come... and then half of the words didn't make sense or didn't translate, and there was no pattern. Usually this is where I throw my hands up and say fahgettaboutit but I decided to press on.

Studying the pictures and figuring out the patterns was the most interesting part. Thankfully, she had given us an overhead picture of her pattern pieces cut out, so I was able to copy the tail and the fins this way. The body, not so much.

The body picture was definitely on an angle, not a perfect overhead shot, so I printed it out and modified it to be slightly larger than what was shown. Pretty much the only thing I kept was the curvature where the two "body" pieces come together... otherwise I pretty much winged it.

Best idea if you go to replicate this pattern? Use jeans with a little bit of stretch to them. This'll make it easier when you turn everything inside out.

Look at that craft table! Yikes, haha

I kind of surprised myself with this pinspiration, really... I took the time to understand the pictures, and a little bit of it was trial and error. This surprisingly didn't take me all that long, this was only about an hour or two project, even with having to retrace and cut the body twice. The first time, I made it WAY too narrow... but thankfully realized it before I got too far.

An obscene amount of polyfill later...

He's about 11" from "nose" to tip of tail, and has about a 10" "wingspan", so he's a good little size! He turned out a little more cartoon-y than life like (probably due in part to my choice in eyes), but I am totally in love with him. I hope my little nephew loves him. <3

Thanks for following along in my whale adventures! If you have any questions or comments, I'd love to hear them!