Sewing Tutorial - Hungry Caterpillar Felt Set

This has always been one of our favourite books in our house. Our children are being brought up bilingual (my husband is German) and it's one of the few books that we have in both English and German.

From a teacher's point of view, I love the book because it teaches kids the days of the week, number sense and counting, the process of a caterpillar becoming a butterfly and, for our younger child, we even talk about colours when we read because the pictures are so bright and beautiful and those fruit pages are perfect for it.

Now, our eldest is 4.5 years old and very interested in learning about how to put a story together and how to read. And that is where the idea for the felt set has come from.

I started out by going through the book and choosing the main parts of story and the most important pictures. I then sketched these. I made each item double layered and added any trim on top of this. It makes them stronger (to last longer) and not as floppy (for more effective play).

I then cut out fabric for a case in which to keep the set together. You could make any size that you prefer, this just fit the zippers I had available at the time. I used clear vinyl PVC for the front of the case and a cute hungry caterpillar quilting cotton that I bought some time back. To keep the seams neat through the PVC, I cut a double layer of cotton, put right sides together and sewed around the rectangle, leaving a gap to turn to out the right way (so that front and back are showing the fabric design on the right side, and all seams are hidden inside). After turning it out the right way, I attached the zipper to the front and back as in the above right picture.

With right sides of the front and back together, I sewed around the edges, opened up the zipper and turned the case out the right way to finish with the above case. 

But back to the felt set....I placed all layers as I wanted them when finished and sewed around each edge, a few millimetres in from the edges. 

Sewing Tutorial: felt breakfast (bacon, scrambled eggs and a boiled egg)

A few years ago, I made my first items of felt food for my daughter's new play kitchen. I have posted a few tutorials here on my blog for these in the past, the most popular being my felt breakfast patterns and tutorials (found here). In that past post you can find instructions to make bread, fried eggs, sausages and croissants.

In this post, I am going to share a pattern and instructions for bacon, scrambled eggs and a boiled egg. You can download the paper pattern here PATTERN: Felt bacon, scrambled eggs and boiled egg.:  The instructions are posted below the following photos.

BACON

1. Cut out two bacon pieces from brown felt, and a strip of lighter brown felt (0.75cm wide) to make the stripes. 

2. Follow the markings on the pattern. Pin the lighter brown felt along along the two stripes and sew along the centre of each stripe to fasten it to the top layer of the bacon.

3. Place the back layer behind and sew close to the edges to attach the front piece to the back and add thickness to the bacon. 

SCRAMBLED EGGS

The scrambled eggs are easier to make by hand.

1. Following the measurements on the paper pattern, cut out two rectangles of pale yellow felt. 

2. Sew a gathering stitch (long loose stitches fastened at the starting end) along one side of the larger piece and pull the thread until the gathered length matches the length of the smaller piece. Pin together and sew using a small stitch.

3. Repeat this gathering and sewing step until the last side.

4. Fill loosely with stuffing and close the last seam. Remove all the gathering stitches.

5. Feed the needle through the inside and pick up enough thickness of felt from the inside to pull and create some puckering. If done correctly, you will not see the stitches from the outside. Repeat until you have a similar effect to what you see below.

BOILED EGGS

1. For the large part of the egg, cut out:

• 3 white side pieces
• 1 white circular piece
• 1 yellow circular piece
• 3 light brown side pieces

Cut out the same pieces for the smaller part of the egg.

2. Place two of the white side pieces wrong sides together and use small hand stitches to sew them together along one side. 

3. Place the other side piece wrong side together to the un-sewn sides and sew down these side edges to form the egg shape.

4. Sew the small yellow circle to the centre of the white circle to form the top of the egg.

5. Place this top on the open top of the curved egg shape formed in (3.) and attach these together by sewing around the circular edge.

6. Repeat these steps to form the smaller part of the egg in the same way.

7. Sew the three pieces of each part of the egg shell together in the same way. When these are complete, cut a zig zag along the top edges to make the 'cracked' effect.

Buen provecho!

Felt crafts

I really love working with felt for kids' toys. I made these felt foods for my daughter almost a year ago. They get played with almost every day and are still in the same condition they were a year ago. They are also so much more pleasant to play with than all the cheap plastic play food that is available in the shops.

You can find tutorials for how to make some of this food here on my blog (here and here).

I've also used a lot of felt for making Quiet Books. It's so easy to sew as it doesn't fray and the good quality stuff doesn't stretch out of shape either.

My next felt project is felt money for my daughter :)

Felt snacks: watermelon, strawberries and cupcake

Watermelon

For each watermelon:

1. Print and cut out the paper pattern. Cut out two red pieces for the watermelon flesh and one green piece for the rind.
2. Sew the two red pieces together along the straight edge with a blanket stitch. I used three strands of a green embroidery thread.
3. Line up the edges of the rind with the curved edges of the watermelon flesh. Sew along one side with a blanket stitch and then two-thirds along the other edge.
4. Fill with polyester filling or felt scraps and close the seam.
5. Use three strands of a dark coloured embroidery thread to sew seeds randomly on the watermelon.

Strawberry

For each strawberry:

1. Print and cut out the paper pattern. Cut out one red piece and one green piece. Fold the red piece in half. Cut the tip off from one end, to make a flat tip as right. Sew together along the bottom and side with a blanket stitch.
2. Sew a running stitch around the top. Fill with polyester filler or felt scraps and pull the running stitch tight. Fasten to close the top.

3. Fasten the thread to the top of the strawberry. Place the green piece on the top. Sew in a cross to hold the green part to the top of the strawberry.
4. Using three strands of a light brown embroidery thread, sew a small, well-spaced running stitch on the strawberry to represent seeds.

Cupcake

For each cupcake:

1. Print and cut out the paper pattern and felt pieces. Using a blanket stitch sew the cake top to the cake side.

2. Sew the edges of the cake sides together.

3. Sew a running stitch along the bottom edge of the cake side. Fill with polyester filler and pull the stitching tight to match the size of the cake base felt piece.

4. Sew the base to the cake side using a blanket stitch. Pull out the running stitch.












5. Sew sprinkles or other decorations onto the top of the cupcake.

Felt breakfast: egg, sausage, croissant tutorial

Sausages

For each sausage:

1. Cut a rectangle 7cm x 9cm from dark brown felt.
2. Fold the rectangle in half lengthways.
3. With needle and matching thread (I used three strands of embroidery thread), use a blanket stitch to join the edges.

4. Fill with polyester filling or felt scraps.

5. Use a long running stitch around each end of the sausage. Pull tight and fasten to close the ends.

Eggs

For each egg:

1. Print and cut out the paper pattern pieces. Cut out two egg whites from white felt and one egg yolk from yellow or orange felt.
2. Place the yellow egg yolk on top of one of the white pieces and sew two-thirds of the way around the yolk. Fill with polyester fill or felt scraps and continue to close the circle.
3. Place the second egg white underneath and sew around 1-2mm from the edge.

Croissants

For each:

1. Print and cut out the paper pattern pieces. Cut two crescents from light brown felt and a wrapping each from light and darker brown felt. The larger piece of wrapping should be from the darker felt.
2. Use blanket stitch to join the light brown crescent pieces, leaving a small gap. Fill the crescent firmly with polyester filling and close the gap with blanket stitch.

3. Sew the wrapping pieces together using a running stitch.

4. Place the widest part of the wrapping along the outer edge of the croissant and secure together using blanket stitch. Secure along the sides, wrapping the main croissant piece as you go. Finish off by sewing along the narrow edge of the wrapping.