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. 

Kids' craft: Toddler Sewing Kit

My earliest memories of sewing are of using scraps of fabric from my mother's sewing to wrap my dolls in new clothes. I feel very lucky to have been taught this useful skill, mostly just through watching and learning, and I would really love if I could pass it on to my own daughter, who is now almost 3 years old. So I started her a sewing kit...

A lot of pieces were bought on Ebay, like these large plastic needles and wooden beads. I used non slip drawer lining from the $2 shop and a quilting frame for sewing practice. Miss almost three loves threading the beads on and has really caught on quickly to how to sew with the needle. The next thing I need to teach her is how to thread the needle :)

I threw in a few miscellaneous items like some velcro, ribbon, zippers and ric rac.

I made these dinosaurs for threading out of craft foam and a hole punch. She loves sewing these.

I was sent this colour chart from an Etsy seller when I made a purchase a while back and picked up the paper tape measure at an Ikea store.

I also included some plastic cotton reels for threading and colour sorting.

Finally, a bulk bag of buttons from the fabric shop. We spend hours sorting these into colour groups :)