Sewing Tutorial: Reversible Chalk Cloth Bunting

We recently had a friends wedding that we weren't able to attend. I still really wanted to send a gift and so we bought them a cute chalkboard that we could personalise with a message, and then they could erase it and use it in their house. Practical, original and fun.

And then I bought this chalk cloth fabric. I've made some portable chalkboard mats for the kids and then I thought that this was a fun idea. Bunting looks so effective and lining it with chalk cloth means that we can reuse it for lots of different occasions.

I started by cutting out triangles of chalk cloth and fabric of the same size, a little larger than how I wanted them to be in the finished product. I also decided to make my own bias binding to string them together, so I had to cut out several long strips of fabric along the bias and feed it through my bias binding maker.

Place cotton and chalk cloth together with wrong sides together. Sew around the perimeter, about 5mm in from the edges. Use pinking shears to cut along the side edges and trim the top edge with normal scissors.

Pin and string together using the bias binding, closing the ends.

Sewing tutorial: Quiet book pages - Bead counter

This is one page I really like to include in my books. Both of my kids love counting and one of their favourite pages in their quiet book is the bead counter. They enjoy moving the beads across, and they also learn their colours by practicing with the beads. It is an easy and effective page.

The starting point for making the page is deciding how wide to make the counter (then cut your thin ribbon in appropriate lengths), to what number to count to (in my larger books, I have include counters that go up to ten), and finally what colours to choose. 

The ribbon I use is very narrow and I do not like to take any chances with safety with beads coming loose, so my first step is to space the ribbons on the page and sew them to the page background. My green felt is about 1.5cm wide, so I sew along the ribbons for about a length of 1cm on one side first. Then I thread my beads on and sew down on the other side to secure the ribbons down and lock the beads in. 

Place the felt lengths over the ribbon ends where you have sewn and pin down. Sew a stitch around the edges. Finally trim off the threads and ribbon ends and your bead counter is done!

Works in progress: Quiet Books (Alphabet, Counting, Colours, Shapes)

So much cutting out....

It's taken me a bunch of evenings in front of the television to get all of these little shapes cut out, and my scissor hand is very tired.

I started out by drawing each picture (in mirror image) onto the heat and bond lite paper and then ironed it onto the felt sheets. The following pieces will all go into my counting book.

Here are the pieces for the shapes book:

And these will all go into the alphabet book...

Finally, we have the pieces for the colours book!

Next I'll arrange the pages, peel off the paper and iron the pieces onto the pages.

I can't wait :)