Dinosaur Crown

In keeping with my plan to make every gift I give this year, I have included party favors in the same category as "gifts." My son is turning 3 soon and I have been trying to figure out what to make for all of the kids he'll be inviting to his party (probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 20!).

I began searching blogland to get some ideas. I kept seeing birthday crowns made out of felt. They were really cute, but they would only be appropriate for the actual birthday boy to wear. Check out these great ideas from Skip to My Lou and One Crafty Place.

Somehow I came up with the idea to make "Dinosaur Crowns" for everyone (in keeping with our dinosaur theme for the birthday party).



It's a great project because it's easy and cheap (25 cents for 1 sheet of craft felt which yields 2 crowns; $1.29 for 1 yard of elastic which yields 3 crowns; fusible webbing-I had some left over from my T-shirt Quilt project, but it's sold by the yard and very inexpensive). It's great too, because felt comes in so many different colors, I can make one to suit every kid at the party (boy or girl). Felt is quickly becoming one of my favorite fabrics to work with!

So here's how I did it. First of all, find an image that you want to use. I actually went to PBS Kids and found a picture of a Stegosaurus that I just simplified. Cut out your "pattern".

Next, cut out your fusible webbing to the size of your felt and iron it on (again, I was using leftover webbing so I had to piece 2 pieces together to cover my felt). Iron according to the directions on your webbing (I ironed on the webbing side, on the "cotton" setting). I used lightweight webbing because I had it leftover, but it seems like most people recommend a heavier webbing. I think the lightweight one was fine because the "crown" doesn't stand up too high.



Now trace your pattern on to the webbing.



And cut it out.



Cut a 10"-12" piece of elastic (I used 3/4") and pin about 1" onto either side of your dinosaur.


Finally, using your sewing machine, stitch around the crown, making sure the elastic gets stitched to the dinosaur. I used contrasting thread in a straight stitch. You could get creative and use a different stitch, or play with the thread colors. Since I'm probably going to have to make 20 of these, I decided to keep it simple.



My son's birthday party is not for a few weeks, but I asked him to try on the crown this morning just to check the size of it. He loved it so much, he insisted on wearing it the zoo!


Now I just hope all the other kids at the birthday party love it as much!



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