Today (11 June) is the 23rd anniversary of the original Jurassic Park movie coming out in theaters! You’ve seen it, right? There’s a scene where Muldoon is hunting the Velociraptors, locks his sights on one, only to see another come out of the bush to his side. He has just enough time to say ‘clever girl’ before she bites his head off. It’s become kind of an expression of rueful admiration of intelligence. Ever since I designed my paper pieced dinosaur patterns, I’ve been wanting to make a pillow with the Velociraptor and Muldoon’s famous last words.
I got it made in time to take it to an evening event we were going to this weekend at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh to take photos with the dinosaurs. Unfortunately not all the dinosaurs were well lit, but we had a great time. It was an Indiana Jones themed night, with a whip show, giant snakes to touch, photo ops with a giant boulder, a scavenger hunt, a symphony playing Indiana Jones theme music, themed cocktails, and all kinds of other activities. It’s part of a quarterly event they have for adults called ‘after dark’ which I’m sure we’ll check out again.
The patterns for the letters to go with the 12″ pattern are now included with the Veronica Velociraptor FPP pattern in my shop – if you’ve bought the pattern before you should be able to download a new version with the letters included. As always, contact me at if you have any problems. I still haven’t finished my own version of my dinosaur quilt pattern, but when I do this will be a great companion!
Our favorite part though: dinosaurs everywhere. Did you know that actual Velociraptors are feathered and only really the size of a large turkey? The dinosaurs in the movie look more like they were modeled on a close relative, Deinonychus, which is a much less appealing name. We went on a docent-led tour around their dinosaur area while we were there and learned all kinds of interesting things, including that there had been a dinosaur named Draconus Hogwartsia (‘dragon king of hogwarts’), but then they found out it was just the juvenile form of an already named dinosaur, so there is no longer a hogwarts dinosaur.
We also wore our matching dinosaur dress and bowtie, which got more compliments than usual. Our only kind of picture of the two of us was this one from the scavenger hunt of digging for fossils – usually it’s a kids activity, but since this was an adults only event we finally got our chance to play.
And I made a little embroidery in one of my necklaces for the event – this color is now available in my 3D printed embroidery hoop shop and glows in the dark!
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Pillow Details:
Pattern: Foundation paper pieced Veronica Velociraptor (letters now included!)
Fabric: Background is Twinkle from Lizzy House Constellations, letters and body are asterisk in metallic sky from Lizzy House Whisper Palette.