Felt food, post 2

For basic instructions, Felt Food, post 1.

Felt pizza slices look difficult but are really not. You'll need a machine to do them, but that makes them come together more quickly! I used the 2 part tutorial here and here. I changed it a little to suit my tastes. I did not use foam in the middle, but poly-fill and I added a strip of red "sauce" between the crust and the cheese.

Sugar cookies are amazingly easy. Pick a few cookie cutters your child would particularly like, and trace the shape onto beige felt. Cut out the shapes, 2 for each cookie. If you are afraid of leaving marks, you can use washable markers. A quick rinse under cold water and it comes right out! Stitch the pieces together, stuffing with poly-fill as you progress.

Bread is a little time-consuming, but totally worth it. I'm sure you can machine stitch these, but I chose to do them by hand. First I cut 4 squares from beige fabric and rounded off the corners a little. Then I cut long brown strips of felt about 3/4" wide. I sewed them together so their perimeter equaled the perimeter of the beige pieces. Stitch the crust to the bread, all the way around. When you are about 3/4 of the way done with the second side of the bread, start stuffing it with poly-fill. You don't want this to be as firm as some of the other pieces of food. Once they have enough stuffing, finish them up.

Quite possibly the easiest felt food I've ever made...PB and J! Just cut some bread-sized pieces from the appropriate colors. The red "jam" can also double as sauce for your bow-tie noodles.

Your bread should have more than just PB and J though. Meat (or mock meat if you are a vegetarian), swiss cheese, lettuce, and tomato are all great toppings. All of these are made with 2 pieces of felt stitched together. The meat is the easiest. Trace something round, cut it out and stitch it together. For swiss cheese, I made a square, then just randomly cut holes. Stitch in and around each hole. The tomato is just two circles, but in order to tell what it is, you should pick a contrasting color and stitch the "wedges". Free-hand the lettuce. To make it more realistic, you can add "veins" with similarly colored floss.

Princess Crown and Wand

For this project you'll need felt, decorative buttons (optional), embroidery floss, a wooden dowel rod, poly-fill, 3/8" elastic, and ribbon (optional). You can find wooden dowel rods in various sizes at a craft store. You don't need a thick one. The thin ones are usually less than a dollar and easy to cut to the size you need.

Print out the star template here. You'll want the biggest star for your wand (cut 2) and the middle sized star for the middle of the wand. The smallest star is for the crown. You can design these ANY way you want. I didn't want ours to be overly princessy/girly, so I chose somewhat neutral colors and didn't make it too flashy. For the crown, you'll need to measure your child's head. You'll want the actual felt part to be about half the circumference of their head. I drew the pattern so it came up to just one simple point at the top. You could make it more elaborate though. You'll want the elastic to make up the rest of the circumference, minus about 2" (so it will be nice and snug on your child's head). So if your child's head is 20", make the crown length about 10" and the elastic about 8". Cut two pieces of the crown shape.

Stitch all of your decorations onto ONE crown piece, then sew the elastic into place on each end of the crown, between the two crown pieces. Hand-stitch all the way around the crown.

For the wand, stitch the decorations on the top piece, the glue the dowel rod to the back piece of the star. Start stitching the star pieces together, stuffing poly-fill into the star's points as you go around. Make sure it is nice and full before you finish sewing it. Tie a ribbon under the star. Now go grant some wishes!

Cloth G-tube pad

So yeah, I know this isn't a toy. But kiddos with tubes love pretty pads instead of ugly, white gauze ones. Surprise your tubie kid with a stack of these!

1. Trace circles onto flannel or any other absorbent fabric. I prefer flannel because it doesn't stretch much when you sew and it's nice and soft. I use 3 layers in my pads and I use the same cup every time so they are all uniform.

2. Pin the layers together and draw a small circle in the center and a line straight down. I use regular kid's washable markers and it washes out in the first wash.

3. Cut up the line and around the tiny circle.

4. Round off the edges. I think this makes the finished product look nicer.

5. Zig-zag around the edge of the pad. Go slowly and reposition the foot as needed. Because it's so small you really have to stop and start a lot unless you are just a genius with a machine (I am not). After zig-zagging, do a straight stitch around the whole thing for added stability.

6. It should look something like this. Trim any stray fabric away from the edge.

7. Add a snap. If you don't have a press or snap pliers, the metal hammer on snaps work fine. They are a bit of a pain, and take a little practice, but they are cheap.

The hand-sewn version: Do everything through step 4 and then just stitch by hand instead of using a machine. It takes longer, but it actually looks nicer and neater, especially around the small inner hole. I used 2 layers of thread, but only 1 is really needed. Wrap the thread around the edge and then straight stitch all the way around. One pad took me an hour vs 10-15 minutes on a machine, so it's not all that time consuming. Stitch one up while you watch your sitcoms in the evening!

Felt puppets

These puppets are more time-consuming than the stick puppets, but will last much much longer. You will need pretty much all the material and skills outlined in the felt food post. You need to start by making a basic pattern for the puppets. I like to draw my pattern on poster board. It is sturdy, but also thin enough that I can fold it in half and make sure everything is symmetrical. For these puppets, I like to make them big enough to fit a small adult hand (like mine!). Once you have the pattern made, cut two pieces for each puppet. Get creative! I've shown 4 of mine here, but there's so much more you can do with this. I made mine mouthless. Mouths are kind of hard to do anyway, and I like how they are somewhat expressionless. It gives kids more freedom in their acting. Stitch on little details, ears, ect, then stitch everything together, leaving the bottom open of course.

You could also just glue all of this together if you don't want to sew. I prefer the sewn look, but glue will work nicely too. You also may want to choose something beside glued-on googly eyes if your child is younger.

Crayon Roll-up

Preschoolers just love these. I don't really need to say more do I? The crayons fit so perfectly! I mostly followed the tutorial here.

Book quilt for the little ones...

Sometimes it is hard to come up with great gifts for babies. They don't really play much, and when they do, they always go for your cell phone or remote control rather than their toys. This is something babies can enjoy even at only a few months old and can use as a wall hanging for several years to come. Hopefully they will cherish it enough to save it for their children!


Pick your child's favorite book. Or pick YOUR favorite kid's book, if your child hasn't shown a preference yet. Scan 8 or 9 of the pictures and save them to your computer. If the book is older, you may have to "clean" up the pictures a bit. If you want the quilt a little more personalized, make the 9th scan a picture of your baby. Cut 9 squares from linen or any white fabric that can be used with iron-on transfers (pssst...mine were from an old sheet!). I used 12"x12" squares, but you can use smaller or larger ones.

Then you'll have to splurge and buy the printable iron-on transfer sheets from the craft store. Or if you have a mother who owns *everything*, just go to her house and "borrow" some. Once you are sure the pictures are just perfect (and flipped, if there are words that need to be read left to right AND the image is sized so it will fit on your squares), print them out onto the transfers. Let them dry, then apply them to the fabric squares according to the directions on the package.

Sew all the pieces together making a 3x3 quilt. You can choose to dress it up or not. I sewed ribbon over each seam, but it is fine left alone too. Then pick a fabric for the back, cut it to size, and stitch it all together. You could add a couple of loops at the top so it can hang as well. Or heck, loops on each side so you can attach toys with linky-doos for playtime on the floor.

Then watch your family members drool over it when it is presented to your little one! They'll think it was professionally made!

For the gamer in your life...

This is not so much a "toy" but rather a special keepsake for anyone you know who is a World of Warcraft fan. Every player in the game, now matter what race or class they choose for their character, starts out with a Hearthstone. This stone can transport them back to the inn of their choosing. It is useful in dangerous situations and also if you just don't feel like walking so far.

I made one for my boyfriend this Christmas. He loves it, but he also thinks I'm a little strange. LOL Anyone who plays WoW will get a kick out of the novelty of it though. Just find a palm-sized, smooth stone (or buy one if you can't seem to find one just right), paint it white (multiple coats so it's really, really white), then paint a blue swirly on the front. If you aren't very artsy, it may take a few tries to get the swirl just right. I think I washed the blue paint off 7 times before I was satisfied with it. So it is important to make sure the white paint has a had a chance to dry *thoroughly*!