If you follow me on Pinterest, you might have noticed a board for “Things that Piper wants me to make her”.  My 4-year-old granddaughter LOVES Pinterest.  We spend “quality” time going through all the pins for mermaids, assorted softies, and cat-themed pillows.

So when we came across the pin for this mermaid tail, she really thought I should make it for her.

Just click on the photo and you should go directly to the tutorial!

The website, Grosgrain, has the tutorial and pattern for the tail.  Typically I follow the instructions the first time I make a project then tweak it to my satisfaction on the next effort.

I followed this pattern pretty closely but I had to make a few changes.

First, I didn’t use the Soft N Comfy fabric she suggests because somewhere in the tutorial she also calls it Minky.  I love Minky.  But without a walking foot on the sewing machine, it’s the devil to sew.  It’s VERY slippery.  And I’m borrowing my daughter-in-law’s machine for this project and it doesn’t have a walking foot.  So I bought an anti-pill fleece that was on sale at Jo-anne’s instead.

Fleece is soft, very forgiving, and doesn’t fray.  So soft, that as soon as I pulled the fabric out of the bag to show Piper and Adley, they laid right down on it and rolled around. Fleece also washes nicely so I let them have a little party.

Second, I don’t have a printer here, so I wasn’t able to use any of the patterns that came with the tutorial.  I just drew the fins on a newspaper and used it for my pattern.

While fleece isn’t as slippery as minky, it still likes to move. When I work with slippery fabric I use a LOT of pins.

The final big change was that I did not hand sew the waist fin onto the tail. When I’m making anything for a kid, I try to do all machine sewing.  It’s a LOT sturdier. I even double stitched all of the seams.  Anything I make for Piper is well-loved and well-used.

I machine stitched the waist fin into the inside of the mermaid tail then turned it to the right side.

Here I’m sewing the waist fin onto the inside of the tail.

I then attempted to stitch the waist fin to right side of the tail and broke the needle.  Whoops! The sewing machine I’m using is very powerful so I was really surprised it couldn’t get through all those layers.  So I had to do a little hand stitching just so the waist fin would stay on the right side and not flip back to the inside.

And how did Piper like it?

I think that’s a happy face!