7 fluffy pipe cleaners in autumn colours – brown, yellow, orange, red, green
I bent five pipe cleaners into leaf shapes and then assembled them – this was super easy and something I think kids would love doing 🙂 You can even collect real leaves to model the shapes off of or find templated to guide you from the internet or craft books.
I’ve been making some felt muse monsters to go with my writing game – I started by cutting up sheet felt – they come in packs where the sheets are about a4 paper size – I cut these into quarters for the monster bodies. Then I cut black squares for the mouths, white egg shapes for the eyes and I had some little black discs or circles of felt. I cut zig zag strips for the teeth.
I laid it all out to see that it all fitted and worked well – the felt for the eyes I cut into regular same sized rectangles first so the eggs would be more uniform. I then stuck it all together with some fabric glue starting with the teeth on the black mouth squares and the pupils on the eye eggs. Then once those where dry I stuck them to the monsters bodies 🙂
These monsters are great for late felt play but could also be used to create halloween bunting 🙂
We are all huge Terry Pratchett fans and I decided I was going to make some disc world toys for the kids – this is the Great Star Turtle A’Tuin who carries the Discworld on it’s back. The elephants and disc are still being made 🙂
I cut out the shapes – this was all free form with the top of the shell being bigger than the tummy shell so that it could be pleated and stand up in a three dimensional shape – I will try and make an actual template to share at some point 🙂
I laid them all out to check it was going to work and then began to sew – I used embroidery silks and the felt for the upper shell has sparkly silver bits in it to represent the stars reflected on the interstellar ice on the star turtles back.
I sewed the fins, head and tail together first, making sure I left the parts that would attack to the body open so that stuffing could be added. I then turned them inside out so that the stitching was hidden, stuffed them and sewed them onto the lower part of the body/shell.
pinched the fabric in on the larger top bit of shell/body so that I could sew a pleat and give it it’s 3D shape, I then stitched it to the main body leaving a small whole for stuffing. Once it was secure I stuffed and and sewed up the remain whole.
I sewed two black-brown buttons on for the eyes 🙂
These photos are of the finished turtle with and without the flash on the camera.
My eldest loves the computer game MineCraft so for her birthday I set about making a MinceCraft Banner using felt – both sheets of felt from which I cut her name – it was a pack of animal skin patterned sheet felt. And needle felt – this is a dry felt technique where you stab the felt fibre to tangle them all up together. I used a brush to sit the fibres on to stab them and got a tool that contains more than one needle so that the process goes quicker.
The creatures are a creeper and the head of an Enderman and they were created free form so there is no pattern I am afraid.
We then sewed them onto a medium width piece of green ribbon, folding the ribbon back on itself at the ends and sewing hanging loops into the banner.
