"felties"

 

A few days before halloween I stopped by our local fabric store to get some costume making supplies. My kids were with me and my son Oliver begged me to buy the book Felties. Of course, we had no time to be making little dolls with three kids in need of costumes, so the book got buried in one of the piles in my work room. During the kids school holiday Oliver found the book and started begging me to sew with him. I let each child pick one idea from the book - Oliver chose the Panda, Owen chose the Samurai, and Bea chose the Polar Bear (most likely because it had a baby). I realized quickly that helping all three at the same time would prove challenging so I scanned the pages for each project and printed them out. As I was trying to figure out the best way for the kids to copy the patterns I remembered my friend Jodi's story on applique in Martha Stewart Kids…she suggests freezer paper as a tool in that story and sure enough, it was the perfect solution here too. The kids could easily trace the patterns onto the freezer paper and then we ironed the freezer paper to the felt. It sticks so you can cut along the lines of the paper--then you just peel the paper off the felt and you have perfectly cut pieces. The boys managed to do much of this on their own once I helped get it organized. Bea's role was more spectator than anything else but she seemed perfectly happy nonetheless. Although I have tons of embroidery floss that I have collected over the years (while never actually learning to embroider) I did not have any that matched our felt. We found that plain old thread worked just fine. We made a few other adjustments along the way too…the pieces that were meant to be glued did not seem secure enough so we sewed a few stitches through them too. We also ran out of steam before making the baby polar bear but luckily Bea was ok with that too. Oliver was the most committed to the project…once his panda was done he asked for a few more scraps of felt and whipped up a little basket of leaves for him to eat too! All in all, it was a great way to spend half a day inside on a very cold day!