Travel Felt Board

MATERIALS:

• One sheet of felt – make sure it’s the regular kind, not the stiff type. You want to choose a color that is different from the color of the shapes you intend to use with the board
• File folder
• Glue stick

STEPS:

1. Trim the felt to fit inside the file folder
2. Cover the back of the felt with glue using the glue stick. If you’re using liquid glue, spread it very thinly – otherwise it will soak through the felt and make it so that felt shapes don’t stick as well
3. attach felt to inside of file folder
4. Enjoy :)

Emma’s new travel felt board with a “castle” created using some of the geometric shapes from these activities.

And with her dress-up bear – the pattern for the bear is here, and winter outfits are here.

Felt pumpkin pie

Here's the pattern. Four slices will fill the IKEA play pie pan pictured above. The edge piece may be a bit long, but you can just trim the end if needed. I used double layers of quilt batting - so I cut eight pieces, not 4 like the pattern says. It all depends on the thickness of the batting you use. The pieces were stitched together using a blanket stitch.

Some cool posts and sites

A Year of CrockPotting: Recipes from one blogger's New Year's resolution to use their crock pot every day for one year.

BeFreeForMe: A site catering specifically to gluten and allergy free diets

A-line elastic waist skirt tutorial from The Train to Crazy

http://homemadebyjill.blogspot.com: some awesome felt food, sock animals, and tutorials for several projects

Felt Food

I'm very fond of felt and fleece as fabrics, because they are easy to work with and fairly forgiving. I designed this felt bread to fit into the children's bread pan sold at Ikea when the pattern is printed full scale to fill up an 8.5x11" sheet of regular paper. I'm not sure how scaling
blogger images works. If anyone knows a better way to include a pattern like this, please let me know.

The loaf of bread can be made using a single square of felt, sold for 20-30 cents in most craft stores. I bought a bag of stuffing for $3, and I barely used any.

You can use the pattern piece for the end of the loaf to make slices of bread (just cut out a 1/2" strip of felt to sew around the edge) and to make "jam" and "peanut butter" fillings. Yellow rectangles make pretend cheese, and a brown circle works as a hamburger (sew two together and stuff them if you want it to be more realistic).

Peanut butter and jelly sandwich:

I sewed everything together using a blanket stitch. Both of my kids love their play food, and I don't have to worry about lead paint!