Lobster! Whaleshark!

Fri, 21 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

When your bestie sends you a sewing video in Instagram with zero ulterior motive but to share it and go “oh, cool!”, for me it is inevitable that I’m going to look at that sewing project and wonder if it’s something I can make for him. Because sewing isn’t really his thing, but if a sewing project caught his eye enough to send it my way, well, I take notice!

So that is how I found myself one day rooting through my fabric stash for all my red fabrics, wondering which ones would look best as a lobster shell or claws or tail. And then I fashioned this little guy up:

The lobster bag, complete

The pattern comes by way of Mariah Makes, and I purchased the digital pattern on her Etsy store.

The lobster bits before I assembled them all

This was a very sweet little project and pretty quick. The longest part, for me, was finding the right interfacing in my project supplies that would work with this. The frustrating thing about interfacing is there are a lot of different kinds, inevitably you do a lot of sewing and the interfacing starts to build up in your stash. Mariah says in her videos about this project that you don’t need interfacing but it improves the end result, and I agree - it would look a little sad without the support interfacing adds.

I happened to have a number of unused shoelaces in different colors, just sort of the detritus you tend to pick up when raising a young kid, in my case back when my kid was burning through shoelaces a ton for some reason (and no longer is). Any kind of cording will do for the lacing but using what I already had handy is always the way to, and that red shoelace is perfect really.

This lobster bag was a birthday surprise for my bestie Basil, he loved it, and is now using it as a dice bag – which I totally didn’t think of as a possible use, but now I can’t unsee it. Who wouldn’t love seeing this guy on the table at a gaming night? I’m always delighted to see this lobster again.

And of course my all-things-ocean-creatures obsessed kiddo was a little sad I didn’t make HER a lobster bag, but it just so happens Mariah also had a whale shark bag pattern, and my kid loves sharks the most so… I made a whaleshark as well.

The whaleshark pouch

The whaleshark pouch, surrounded by my usual mess

I made a small modification to this pattern and shortened the inner pouch so the whaleshark was able to hold something stuffed inside. I used some spelt and lavender buds (harvested from my own garden of course) and put it inside the whaleshark, so this guy now has a nice weight and scent to it, which my kid greatly enjoys.

My one slight, and I do mean slight, annoyance with this project was that there were no written instructions on assembly steps. Granted this project is pretty easy, but it’s not entirely intuitive how to put a 3D shape like these together, and written instructions would really help. I know I am showing my age but instructions being in video form only are so hard to navigate, and it’s made even worse when those videos are only posted on social media platforms.

I’m begging younger creators, as an Old, please include even super-simple instructions in writing with your digital patterns. It’s just like one page to append to the front of your PDF. Please please please <3

Whaleshark on Maria Makes A Mess

Lobster! Whaleshark!