Hi, everyone!
Today, I’m dusting off this old thread to share a passion project I’m very excited about! I’ve been wanting to have something like this for YEARS, and some of you might remember my previous attempt at making it happen. There were earlier attempts, too, which were never posted here, but none of these other attempts were a version I was very satisfied with. Now, finally, I’ve achieved the plush toys I’ve wanted for ages!
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, it’s the Rainbow Faces!!
Although I haven’t had any new Land Before Time projects to post in this thread for a while, I’ve made plenty of other plush toys over the past bunch of years. My skills have expanded a lot since the last time I tried to sew some Rainbow Faces, which was about 10 years ago. In December, I noticed some of the colors I had in my felt supply matched the male Rainbow Face’s coloring, so I decided it was finally time for another attempt at creating this duo. But I decided to go about it differently than before, because I wanted to finally do this RIGHT!
There were multiple issues from my last try that I wanted to avoid…
First, the seams. They were way too visible on my old projects. The thread I used was too dark, which made my stitching stand out way too much, and the fleece fabric I usually chose did nothing to cover it up. To make matters worse, these characters involved even more seams than most projects due to the multitude of different fabric colors it took to create their heads. It was too difficult for me to keep that many seams neat and symmetrical, which is why the heads came out so misshapen.
Second, the poses. In the past, I put the characters’ legs at a 90-degree angle to their bodies, trying to achieve something resembling a scientifically accurate Gallimimus posture. This resulted in no hope of the characters ever standing up. The best they could do was lean back against their tails while their legs stuck out in the front, which looked awkward. Plus, their head and neck positions meant they spent a lot of time staring intensely at the ceiling, and the fact that their facial expressions looked rather glazed over didn’t help.
Third, the proportions. In the movie, the Rainbow Faces look pretty graceful as far as LBT dinosaurs go, with slender limbs and narrow heads.
Fleece fabric tends to expand when stuffed, however, and my stitches weren’t as firm as they should’ve been, so my previous Rainbow Faces turned out far chubbier than they should have. Of course, I could have taken in the seams afterward, but I was afraid to. The thick legs and tail were the only reason these Rainbow Faces were able to sit up at all.
This time around, I took a totally new approach. I decided to use felt to sew a base form with minimal coloring, then needle felt completely over it with the final colors. Needle felting is when you take a preexisting surface, usually foam or felt, and use a certain tool to stab loose felt fibers into it until the surface is covered to whatever extent you want. This would eliminate my problem of having to deal with new seams every time a new color was introduced. I wasn’t sure how this would turn out at all, since I didn’t have that much experience with needle felting, but it seemed worth a shot. Well, things turned out far better than I imagined!
I made the male Rainbow Face first, since I already had all the colors I needed for him. I didn’t take as many WIP pictures as I should have, but I do have a few here. Take the head, for example! (Haha, see what I did there, because this character says “for example” all the time? Oh, never mind.)
After sewing the basic shape, I was surprised at how nicely the final colors stayed in place with needle felting. It TOTALLY covered up all the seams that were underneath. It was a pretty forgiving process, too, since if I mistakenly added a color to the wrong area I could just go right over it with a different color!
I also decided to pose my Rainbow Faces differently this time. In order to have these two stand up well, it was time to just get over scientific accuracy and go straight for that tail-dragging dinosaur pose of the 80s and 90s. The Rainbow Faces actually stand that way quite a few times in the movie, anyway, because this is LBT we’re talking about. Let’s face it, these cartoons weren’t doing any scientific research at all! I also repurposed an unused wire hanger in my closet to give some support to the legs and tail of these Rainbow Faces, shaping the wire into a tripod of sorts. Now I wouldn’t have to worry about whether the legs and tail were thick enough to hold the characters up, so I was free to keep their proportions accurately slim.
Anyway, back when I posted those last Rainbow Faces years ago, some of the feedback I received pointed out that their poses looked stiff, with the hands in a pretty generic dinosaur pose. I wanted to improve on that this time around, too. So I rewatched the movie to see what facial expressions and hand gestures the Rainbow Faces tended to use the most. I love these characters’ personalities, and I wanted to showcase that in these renditions of them!
The male Rainbow Face is warm and welcoming to the gang, always eager to help them out or teach them something new, to the point where his enthusiasm often brims over and nearly causes him to reveal classified information. I always got the impression that he was the rookie of the duo, still getting the hang of going on missions and such. But even with his occasional fumbles, you can still tell he’s very intelligent. I always thought his voice and word choices made him sound like a kindly professor!
He’ll often hold up his forefinger when he’s trying to make a point, so I stitched down some fingers on his right hand to create that pose, and his other hand is opened outward. I wanted him to look like he’s excited to teach somebody some science.
Of course, some people I know have pointed out how the fact that he only has three fingers could also make it look like the one he’s holding up is, well…you know. But whatever. That’s how it looks in the movie, too!
For his facial expression, I decided I wanted his eyes to be fully open for that friendly, enthusiastic look.
The orange areas of his eyes were cut from sheets of felt, and his pupils are plastic eyes from Etsy. I think the shiny pupils really helped give him the bright-eyed smile I was looking for!
So here’s the finished plush!
He’s about 12 inches tall when standing, but he can also sit down because of the wire in his legs. In the end, he took about a few weeks to make. What do you think of him?
Did I mention I LOVE HIM SO MUCH?!? 
Up next, I’ll show off his colleague in a separate post once I’ve taken more pictures!
