A Dinosaur Story

My grandson was about 6 or 7, I think, and in the middle of a serious dinosaur obsession. (Also a shark obsession and an alligator and crocodile obsession; pretty much anything that can kill you horribly he loved) He's a teenager now so this was a while back. I was looking around the fabric department at Walmart, because fabric, and I found a dinosaur print flannel. The background was different size rectangles in red, blue and, if I remember correctly, tan or brown and the dinosaurs were green and brown. Now a normal grandmother would have bought some and made her grandson some pajamas but I'm not normal. My first thought was to make a shirt for myself so I could be the cool grandmother who's not too grown up to wear dinosaurs.

The lady working in the fabric department that day appeared to be about ten or more years older than I was at the time. As she was measuring out the fabric she commented about what a cute fabric it was "for a little boy." I suppose the smart thing to do would have been to just agree with her and leave it at that but I admitted that I was planning to make a shirt for myself. She laughed like that was the craziest thing she had ever heard and said something like, "You must really like dinosaurs." I told her that I like a lot of different kinds of prints and she said, "Well, I guess so," in that tone that suggested there was something definitely off about liking anything other than subdued, tasteful little florals and such.

I made the shirt and wore it for several winters but for the last three or four years I hardly wore it at all and although I still liked it I decided I needed to make some sacrifices to make room in the closet for some new things.

The point of my telling you this story is to observe that for each of us there are things we do not wear not because we ever consciously think, "I do not wear stuff like that," but because it just never occurred to us to choose it even if, in a way, we like it. But once we wear one of those things we do not wear it becomes something we do wear and the next time we come across a cool dinosaur fabric, or whatever, it's a perfectly natural thing to buy it and wear it.

So I found this really cool dinosaur fabric at eQuilter and, naturally, I bought it. It's one of the lighter weight quilting cottons, nice, light and breezy, perfect for summer.

I used McCall's 9065 again. This time, as you can see, I left off the sleeves. I only had to raise the openings about half an inch for modesty. I also made it with an unbanded collar. I had to make a back facing and change the front facing a little bit. The original only goes to the front yoke. For this version I had to make it go all the way to the shoulder seam.

I also made side vents.

You can't really see it in the photos but I used gold color thread, exactly the color of the gold dinosaurs, for the topstitching around the collar, neckline, arm holes, and hem.

I love it. I think this might be my favorite made from this pattern so far. Maybe. It's hard to say. I love them all.