Uh oh! We need a tooth pillow!

What do you do when your first born looses his first tooth, and you don't yet have a tooth pillow? Do you:

A.) Run to the store (the day after a blizzard) and hope that they have tooth pillows there?

B.) Go to Etsy, find the closest makers of tooth pillows there, and drive an hour to get one (the day after a blizzard)?

C.) Tell them to forget about a tooth pillow, just put the tooth under the pillow? No, I don't care how much you wanted a tooth pillow, just put the dang tooth under the pillow!

D.) Say you've been bad, and the Tooth Fairy isn't going to come tonight anyway? or

E.) Search your house to see what kind of craft/sewing materials you have on hand.

I thought about "C", but went with option "E" instead.

Thing One lost his first tooth today. I didn't think it would come out for another week or so. He came to me this morning, and told me that he was playing with it, and look what happened! (He broke the front part of the tooth loose, so it was only holding on with the back.) I still thought it would be there for a while.

As he was eating his PopTart (yeah, great breakfast, I know...) he told me that he was chewing with his front tooth. I told him that he's supposed to only BITE with his front teeth, and if he's having a problem with that then to break apart his PopTart. He asked me to do it for him because apparently (I'm so much better at it), he was breaking the pieces too large, and if he made them smaller he got filling all over his hands.

As I was breaking it apart, he started shouting, "MOM! LOOK!" He spit out his tooth in his hand, and triumphantly held it up for me to see. No blood. No mess. No pain. No crying. He was so proud!

Thing Two, on the other hand, was not so proud. She looked at his tooth, at his mouth, and back at his tooth and turned a shade of green/gray. I thought she was going to pass out! She exclaimed that she DID NOT like it, and she wanted it back in his mouth. I told her that a new BIG tooth was growing there, and that's why the little one fell out. I told her that she could see the new tooth coming up where the other one was. (It was actually just part of his gum that was whitish where the tooth was attached just moments before.) She was happy with that, and her normal color returned to her face. THANK GOODNESS!

So instead of getting worrying about a tooth pillow then, I did some work, played on FaceBook, played with the kids, talked on the phone, went outside and played in the snow, played on FaceBook some more, talked on the phone more, had dinner, read some blogs, played with the kids, and then I realized that it was time for bed. And Thing One was adamant about NOT going to bed without a tooth pillow.

So I searched my house for acceptable materials for a tooth pillow. Actually, several times during the day I looked for fabric that I had purchased to use as a nap mat cover last year, but never made the cover. It's some kind of blue Hulk material. Blue is Thing One's favorite color. Perfect! Use blue Hulk material, a piece of white felt, and some stuffing. Uh oh. No stuffing... Doesn't matter anyway, I can't find the blue material...

I DID find, however, black felt, white felt, and red felt. You know what colors they are, don't you? PIRATE!! So I made a pirate tooth pillow.

Step one - Draw a rough skull outline on a piece of paper.

Step 2 - pin rough skull skull shape to white felt. Cut out skull shape. (I have two here because I was going to make the pillow just the skull. I wasn't going to put it on an actual pillow.)




Step three - Cut out eye shape and eye patch shape from black felt. Using scraps, cut four (or so) strips for the space between the teeth, a strip for the eye patch strap, and a rounded upside down heart for the nose.

Step four - Cut a boat shape, and a tail shape from red felt.

(Assemble pieces on white skull cut out several times to see if they fit properly. Cut smaller to fix if they do not. :-P )

Step five - Using coordinating thread, stitch on face pieces. I used a straight stitch. One stitch up/down for the teeth (in the middle of the strip of felt), Out line of the patch, patch strap, eye, and nose. Stitch along the top edge of your skull to stitch on the red bandanna. Don't stitch on your "knot" yet. (I made this mistake.)

DON'T FORGET TO BACK STITCH!!

DON'T stitch the top of your eye patch closed. This will be where your tooth/reward goes.

Step six - Stitch your skull face onto your black felt. Which, in my directions, I have omitted as a step b/c I wasn't going to do this... So let's back up a minute....

Step SIX - Cut a two pieces of black felt just bigger than your skull.

Step SEVEN - Stitch your skull face onto your black felt. I used black thread on the white skull because I like the contrasting look. You can use white if you'd like.

Step eight - Stitch your knot/tail onto your bandanna and your front of your pillow. Make sure you stitch down the tails as well. I didn't do this, and I'm afraid Thing Two might pull it off.

Step nine - Lay your front and back pieces of felt together, wrong sides facing. (I wanted a rough edge. It's a pirate skull after all.) Stitch around right side, top, and left side. Leave the bottom open for stuffing.

Step ten - Using Polyfill (which I didn't have. Luckily I had some batting.) or other stuffing material you have on hand, stuff that baby good!

Step eleven - Stitch the bottom of your pillow closed. When your tension gets all messed up on your final stitches, yell and and bang stuff because you're so close to being done, and now your machine is messing up.

Step twelve - Decide that you don't care to unstitch the messy, loopy stitches that came from your bobbin. You're just going to cut them off and sew over them. It's black thread on black felt on your son's tooth pillow. No one's going to notice.

Step thirteen - (I had to make this one up because I don't want to end on Thirteen!) Squish your pillow to flatten out the inside filling. (Okay, I didn't really make this up. I really did this. It made the pillow look nicer to have the filling a little more even.)

Step fourteen - Give to the toothless one, place tooth inside, place under pillow and hope the Tooth Fairy remembers!

I made this in about an hour. The ONLY reason it took so long is because I didn't have a plan for it, and I kept changing things up. Now that I know what I'm doing, it should only take about 30 minutes. I might go to the store Tuesday and get more felt to make one for Thing Two... Not that she's anywhere near loosing her teeth, but I'd rather not be so pressed for time next time!