Giraffe growth chart for my nephew

Yesterday was my Nephew's first birthday!!! I can't believe he is one already.  He is growing too fast :) This is what I made him for his birthday.  

It's a giraffe growth chart.  The one on the left is one that my Mom's friend made when she was pregnant with me.  That thing is 32 years old!! It has all of my major growth markers on there. It now hangs in PB's room and I am adding his growth milestones on it too.  Well My nephew needed something to chart his excellence so I made him one.  All I did was copy the one I already had. I am sure the person who made this followed a pattern, but it was 32 years ago, think it is still out there?  Remember the quilt I made him last year?  Well I used many of the same fabrics. 

Here is a peek at how I did it:

I lined up all the fabric strips to be a little wider than the giraffe.  I sewed all the strips together.   

Here are all the strips not ironed yet.  

I took some fusible fleece and with the sticky side up I cut around the giraffe.  Next I ironed it to the back of the strips of fabric sewn together and cut around leaving about a 1/2 border of fabric hanging off the fleece. Then I did a little bit of swirly quilting.  You can see my quilt lines in the next picture.  I just randomly sewed lines to give the giraffe some texture.

You can see the extra fabric here.  Then I laid it facedown on the brown backing fabric and cut.  

We were dog sitting when I made this, Cooper really was a big help :)

I made a tail and the nubby head things separate and sandwiched them in between the outside fabrics.  Then I sewed around the giraffe right at the edge of the fleece.  I left an opening on the straight side to turn him right side out.  

Here he is all turned out before he was ironed.  No ears yet.  I ironed him and sewed the opening shut.  

Before I did the hand sewing, I sewed on the measuring tape.  I was lucky to find this perfect matching blue.  I did 2 lines of stitches so it wouldn't hang off the fabric.  

Then I hand sewed the ears on and some buttons for the eyes and mouth.

PB was very upset when I took his giraffe away to make one for his cousin.  He got over it though when he saw the new one and realized his wasn't going away.  He was pretty obsessed with the buttons on the face.  

If there is one thing I would change it's the legs.  They got a little wonky.  I think maybe I should have cut them out all the way before sewing.  

The ears have a different fabric on the back.  And here you can see those nubby head things.  I could look up when they are actually called but I like my way :) 

Here is the back of the head.  I am using some clips from Ikea so they can hang this guy.  My Bro, SIL and Nephew are moving to a new city this month.  I can't wait to see how this look's in my Nephew's new room :)