I’ve been having a little fun with my felt scraps.  Just experimenting with what I have on hand to make my girls some new hair pins.

It always happens that in the midst of a sewing or craft project that neat stack of materials and supplies that I have gathered becomes scattered all over the place: thread in one spot, notions covered by fabrics, pattern packet and instructions separated from each other.  Sometimes I feel like more time is spent searching for the pieces I need than actually sewing.  Here is a simple way to be stylishly organized.

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Time: less than an hour

Materials:

• Chunky Picture frame 11” x 14”
• 4 -2-1/2” finish nails
• 4 cup hooks
• 2 clothes pins & 2 1″ finish nails to attach these
  
• Spray paint

Step 1: Clean the frame

Step 2:  Figure out which side will be the top of the frame.  On the sides of the frame, screw in cup hooks, two per side on short sides of frame, 2 per side, place 1 one each side about an inch down from the top a corner and couple of inches from the bottom corner.  These can hold scissors, buttons, safety pins or anything else you might have to organize.

Step 3: Nail 2-1/2″  nails along bottom edge of frame at an angle, you may want to pre-drill so the frame wood doesn’t split

Step 4: Spray paint.

Step 5: Attach clothes pins, by taking them apart and nailing one side into the frame and then assemble again with the spring, this takes a little fussing about but they will be secure.

Step 6:  Hang frame in craft room and add your current project notions, pattern and tools to all the hooks and clips and be a little more organized for your project.

TaDaa!

Finished Sewing Square

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle

With the long winters in Ann Arbor and the inevitable snow days, I’ve had plenty of time to do some kid crafts. This felt board has been a big hit with my son who loves to have me tell him over and over the well-loved The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle and the story of The Three Little Pigs.

1.  We covered an old bulletin board with some batting to make it even and then stapled green felt for the ground and blue felt for the sky to the back of the board. I sewed the two colors together first so the horizon line would lay nice.

You could also cover a sturdy piece of cardboard or a light-weight piece of wood to make the board. Mine measured 20” h x 16” w.

2.  Then, we bought TWO paper-back books of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Since you will cut into the pictures on the back page, you will need two books to ensure that you can cut out all the main pictures.

3.  After cutting the pictures, we glued felt onto the backs of them. We could then have fun telling the story as it reads in the book and make up our own versions of the caterpillar’s adventures.

4.  After playing with the board, we put the pieces into a zip-loc bag and tacked them to the back of the board so they would not get lost.

It was easy to collect two books of each story, since in paperback they were fairly cheap at the bookstore and our story of The Three Little Pigs found at a second-hand book store.

We also made our own stories by drawing on white card stock then cutting them out and backing them with felt. In this way, we made The Clock Story that tells what we do at each time during the day, complete with four-year-old illustrations.

Of course, there are many options for stories and even for the felt combination. Other ideas we had were:

to make one story board with two different colors of blue for The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister

blue for water on the whole board with a brown “island” in the center for pirate stories

or brown felt on the bottom for a floor with orange felt on top for our own family version (complete with photos of family members) of The Napping House by Audrey Wood.

Hopefully the snow days are behind us, but now I still have a  project to take out for all those rainy spring days.

So, I love the idea of chalkcloth, but the idea of writing with chalk just gives me the willies.  The mess of the chalk dust has stopped me from having fun with this fabric.  But this weekend, I found a solution, Chalk Ink markers.  The name is a bit misleading since they are not chalk, but they can be used on chalkboards and chalkcloth and just need to be washed off with a wet cloth.

Once I discovered the markers, I was immediately onto a project, I’ve been wanting to do–creating a message center for the family so we can keep track of things to be done and school reminders.

I already had a fabric-covered magnetic memo board, that I had made a few years ago and decided to rework it.  Go to your local Goodwill, re-use center, or Salvation Army and find a huge frame with a picture (you need the insert!).  Mine cost about $5.00 for a  24″ x 30 frame, which I spray painted white.  I then purchased a piece of sheet metal from the local home improvement store (less than $10) and with a metal snips cut it to size and glued it with a spray adhesive to the insert.

Before! fabric covered board.

In my case, I just peeled back the fabric and revealed the the sheet metal.

Sheet metal for magnetic surface

Used a can of spray adhesive and was very generous with the spraying  of the sheet metal.  I then rolled out the cut to size piece of chalkcloth on the adhesive covered sheetmetal and smoothed  it out (no air bubbles!) and let dry for about 1 hour.

Chalkcloth covered sheet metal for reminder board

Insert in the frame, secure  and TaDaa!

TaDaa! finished magnetic chalkboard

Time into this project after all the supplies were gathered about an hour or so of actual work.  Cost less than $30.

My kids love the board, checking to see what things they need to do and then the satisfaction of crossing them off or erasing them.  Of course lots of funny messages from Dad have been written along with loads of drawings already.