Christmas Sewing: Colossal Squid

Sorry for the radio silence lately, I told myself that I would try to resume a more regular blogging schedule after Christmas. Between Christmas trees, Christmas sewing, Christmas scheming, Christmas shopping, well, I guess I could just sum all that up as Christmas... Ahem, with all the Christmas-ing going on, I needed to limit my computer time to maximize productivity time and direct mental energy towards things that jumped higher up on the priority list. 

I much prefer a home-made Christmas. Something about turning your back on commercialism and consumerism and making things yourself just makes me feel freer. I'm weird that way. I'll step into a craft or fabric store any day, but when it comes to actual 'shopping,' I'll run the other way. 

Now to fill you in on what I've been working on - 

Between paper-piecing and pj sewing, I made a giant squid. Not joking. This sucker's probably over 7 ft tall! 

The inspiration and directions came from something I saw on Pinterest. Big surprise there. You can check out the tutorial for yourself here. I drew out the pattern pieces, cut everything out, and, with the help of Emi, sewed the silly squid together. We put the last stitched in on Christmas Eve.  

The thought of trying to wrap something of that size was daunting. So I skipped that step. After the mini-man went to bed and fell asleep, I crept into his room with the squid in tow, and gently put it right next to his head so he'd wake up with a colossal squid looking at him. The next morning, all I heard was, 'Wha...? WHOA!' And then he ran around the house showing everyone his monster plushie. 

Even when I was working on it, it was obvious that it wasn't a 'normal' project for me. Where would you hide such monstrosity? If I told you where I stashed it, I couldn't hide things there anymore. :P