DIY Hobby Dragon Tutorial

Thanks to this awesome post I came across from Talking Trash and Wasting Time, it gave me a great idea to make Hobby (or stick) Dragons!  I've seen the hobby horses before, of course, but most of them looked so silly and fake to me.  When I saw her idea redone for dragons I was hooked.  I ended up making a bunch of these for birthday and Christmas gifts this year and thought I would share a tutorial on how to do them.

Now, I'm not really a tutorial type of person, so I don't have pictures of every step along the way, and the pictures I do have are from all the different dragons I made so the colors and shapes jump around. But there are a lot of tutorials out there for hobby horses so I'm sure you'll be able to figure out anything I left out or is a little confusing.

Your going to need: Material of your choice (I made some dragons out of fleece, others out of cotton with a sparkly mesh overlay).  Fleece for spikes, nostrils, eyes, and teeth.  A 3/4" wooden dowel that is 4' long.  A glue gun. And lastly, some embroidery floss, thick thread, string, etc to tie the horses head on.

 The first thing I did was lay out my fabric, folded over, and I cut out a dragon (or horse) shaped head.  Since you folded it over, you should have two pieces the same size.  You can use a template (the one pictured was cut out of 11x14 construction paper) but I found it easier to free hand it and I love that each dragon I made is a little bit different for each of the kids I made them for.  (And some advice, make sure your fabric is facing the right way when you cut.  The crowns on the one above all ended up being upside down on this dragon.  Oops.) 

You also want to cut out whatever you want to do for spikes (or fire) at this time. Lay one piece of your horses head down, fabric side up.  Place you spikes, facing down, on top of your fabric.  Likewise, if you decided to make some fire coming out of your dragon's mouth, put that down facing inwards as well. Lastly, place the second piece you cut on top, wrong side facing up.  In the picture above, instead of felt spikes I used tulle. 

I suggest pinning everything together so things don't shift inside.  Then just sew along the edges leaving the very bottom of your dragon open.  Hem the bottom edge up to prevent unraveling.

 Turn your dragon inside out and admire how cool those spikes look! (Sorry for the dark photo, I did a lot of these at night once the kids went to sleep).  For the one above, I didn't hem the bottom but it ended up starting to unravel while I was working with it so I hemmed the bottom edge on all the rest of the dragons at the same time.

Now cut out your face peices from different colored felt.  You can get away with only using black and white if you don't have different colors, but most of my dragons ended up with blue eyes.

 

Now here's where I took the short cut for crafting and broke out my glue gun.  You could hand sew the eyes and nostrils on, but I'm not that talented and trying would have taken me hours.  Instead I just used the hot glue to put the eyes together, and then glue the face onto the dragon.  I didn't put any teeth on the one above that has fire.

Now the fun part my kids liked helping me with, stuffing it!  Stuff your dragon head up to the head.  When it's stuffed full and just to the neck take a little break.  Here's the part I didn't get a picture of but here's a great tutorial on youtube that's generally what I did.  I put some stuffing on the end of my dowel to pad it and wrapped extra fabric over it.  This helps prevent the dowel from sticking out the top of your dragon over time with rough play.  The tutorial shoes thread, grooves, and a lot more work then I did with mine.  I just hot glued the fabric on the dowel instead of doing thread.  It's inside the dragon so I don't expect this to come loose since it won't be played with directly.

After that, stick your now padded dowel inside the dragon head (It shouldn't go all the way to the top since you already put some stuffing inside the dragon head).  Finish stuffing your dragon the rest of the way, leaving about a one inch gap at the top.  Hot glue all around the dowel and push the fabric down on the glue until it holds tight.  Now take your embroidery floss and tie a knot around the bottom to secure.  I wrapped it around the dowel with a drop of hot glue to hold it all together, making a nice, tight binding.

And that's it.  The finished one above was a birthday present for a friend.  I've made five all together and they all came out just a little different.  I had so much fun making these.  If you try it yourself let me know how it goes!

Screen Printing Tutorial - Frozen Style

Frozen has become this massive landslide of snowflakes and glitter.  Every little girl I know loves it.  Let it Go is heard wherever we go.  And don't even get me started on the mad dash to get the recently restocked Elsa dresses at Disneyland for Little Miss that we had to do.

So, in honor of the awesomeness of Frozen, here's a tutorial just for you!  Little Miss loves Elsa.  She walks around pretending she has Elsa powers, holding her hands out infront of her with an intense concentration on her little 2 year old face or stomping her foot hard upon the carpet turning everything to ice with joyful glee.  But besides the before mentioned Elsa dress, she doesn't have anything else that's frozen.  I tried to buy her a shirt but she's moving up into girl sizes now and for whatever reason, a size XS Frozen shirt we found is fitted instead of straight and just doesn't fit her right.  We had to return it. To make it up to her I made this.

I found an Elsa template from Heidi and Finn.  I decided instead of sewing it on like in their tutorial, I would screen print it instead.  Copying another Frozen design on their site I planned out my design on a plain white tank top that was on sale at Target.

 

Next I sewed on the words Let It Go.  I tried to do it on the machine but it just wasn't working for me so I ended up doing it by hand.  I traced the words with pencil so I just had to follow the line.  Using this system, even doing it by hand, it went fairly quickly. 

 

After the words were complete I washed the entire thing just to make sure the thread was secure and nothing was going to shrink on me.  Then I took my template and cut it out using an x-acto knife.

 I placed the paper template onto white contact paper that I got from home depot.  You really don't need anything fancy for this.  Screen printing can be very complicated, but it can also be very simple as well. Make sure you cut the shape out without cutting through the rest of the contact paper.  The Elsa I cut out isn't needed.  For the screen printing, it's the missing pieces that will receive the paint.

I peeled the backing off the contact paper and placed Elsa onto my screen.  I have an actual screen printing screen we got from a yard sale awhile back.  The screen is dirty though and, because of that, doesn't always work just right.  I really should just toss it but I can't bring myself to do it.  We also have screens we've made when Green Bubbles did Curiosity Hacked (previously known as Hacker Scouts) last summer.  There's a great tutorial at One Golden Apple that talks about making your own screens as well as the contact method above and how to do it with kids!

 I ran into a problem mixing the colors of screen printing ink.  I wish it turned out a little more like the color of the thread and less blue, but I don't think Little Miss cares.  (I have no problem sharing my mistakes with you!)  I used Speedball ink and I highly recommend getting Speedball Fabric Screenprinting Ink Starter Set instead of buying the colors separately.  It comes with all the primary colors plus green, black and white so you are able to mix the colors you need.  Once the ink is applied you do need to heat set the ink by ironing it.  If you forget this step your beautiful design will just wash out.  Or, if you make a horrible mistake and want to remove it.

I also made a tutu to make the tank top for Little Miss.  Do you think she likes it?

We'll be wearing this to Disneyland on one of our many trips.  Little Miss has an Elsa dress from Disney but it's just to hot to wear right now.  The tank top and tutu is a lot cooler!