Patterns: Dinosaurs and (because I can never resist) another bird

This weeks patterns are all freebies. When searching Flickr for free patterns recently I was immediately drawn to the simplicity and charm of this pattern by Flickr user sarachung and as I was in the process of making another set of bags as birthday presents , I immediately had to sew the little bird up, adding a L for the birthday girl's name.

I also had another birthday bag to sew up, for a boy this time and fantastic as the great range of free embroidery patterns out there are, I find they tend to be more orientated towards feminine designs, so this time I made my own pattern up, based on photographs of the dinosaur toys I was actually giving as a birthday present (I made one up for my son to).

The actual bags are based on a pattern for Trinket Keepers found here on the Made by Rae blog.

You can find the designs for the T-rex and the diplodocus on my Flickr stream here (without the letters).

The letters I used for both the dinosaur bags and the bird bag, were created by typing the letters I needed into Word (although any other basic word processing program would do), finding a font I liked (in this case I used Times New Roman) and blowing the letters up to the size I wanted (in this case I changed the size of the letters to 300pt.). I then printed the letters out and using my light box, traced them onto the fabric, along with the bird and dinosaur designs. You can see more in progress photos on my blog.