Dress-up Box - Wands

These wands were a last-minute addition to the Box -

the girls already had a pair of star wands (pictured in this post)

so I didn't include new wands in the original list of contents.

But I saw them lying around the house one day, looking

decrepit and fuzzy, because I had gone and used acrylic

craft felt to make them in a hurry. So I made three new wands,

out of the good felt this time. Again, this was a very fast 

project so I thought I'd do a tutorial for them too. Insane, I 

know, when it's five days to Christmas and I should be 

wrapping a multitude of gifts instead of documenting the 

painful construction details but it's in my blood. Sorry.

Well, a person essentially needs

For the Flower Wand

• Piece of felt cut into a flower shape (front of wand)
  
• Another piece of same-color felt cut bigger than the flower shape (back of wand, pre-trimmed). You could cut the second piece into a flower shape too, but that would mean aligning all the fussy petals when stitching the two flower pieces together which is iffy.
  
• Other smaller pieces of felt for the center detail of the flower
  
• Miscellaneous ribbon
  

For the Heart Wand

• Two heart-shaped pieces of red felt
  
• Miscellaneous ribbon
  
• Other decoration/embellishments

For the Sun Wand

• One circular piece of orange felt
  
• One circular piece of yellow felt
  
• Miscellaneous ribbon cut to 1.5" lengths. Best to use at least 1/4" widths.
  

along with appropriate-width dowels like these

and the usual suspects: craft glue, sewing machine,

sewing thread and a good babysitter.

Step 1

Complete all embellishments except for the adhesive sorts which can be left to the last.

For the Flower Wand, I embroidered silly little dots with yellow floss (all 6 strands) on the green circle, then top-stitched that to the navy circle, then pinked the edges of the navy circle. Finally, I top-stitched the navy circle to the teal flower.

For the Heart Wand, I top-stitched about 1/2" from the edge all around both hearts in white thread, just for contrast. You could hand sew a running stitch with embroidery floss for a superior effect but I was lazy.

For the Sun Wand, I did running-stitch in a spiral in contrasting-colored thread (i.e. yellow thread on the orange circle and orange thread on the yellow circle).

Step 2

Sew the pieces together.

For the Flower Wand, place the flower-shaped front piece on the blobbish back piece and top-stitch close to the edge of the flower outline. Leave a small opening for inserting the dowel (see the loose stitches at the bottom). Remember to back-stitch when you start and end! Then trim the back piece to a flower shape, using the front piece as a guide.

For the Heart Wand, I thought I'd be a bit clever and sew along the outline with right sides facing in and then turn it right side out. No reason, just experimenting to see if this would give a more rounded product. The downside is that one would need to leave a rather large opening for turning out, meaning more hand-sewing later.

For the Sun Wand, mark equal intervals around the circumference of the circle for the ribbons. Top-stitch close to the edge of the circle, inserting ribbons about 1/2" (so about 1" sticks out) as you go. Leave a small opening at the bottom for inserting the dowel.

Step 3

Stuff the shapes but don't be overzealous - they are not meant to be softies but more like, er.. puffy flatties.

Step 4

Assemble the wand.

For the Flower Wand

Insert a dowel experimentally into the opening of the flower and lightly mark on the dowel the depth of insertion. Apply strong craft glue above this point (about 1/2") all round the dowel and stick the ends of the ribbon all round the dowel.

Let dry briefly. then apply more glue on the section of the dowel that will be inside the flower, including the adhered ribbon ends.

Insert dowel-with-ribbons into the flower - I found a twisty motion helps defeat the resistant stuffing.

Hand-sew (ugh) around the opening to ensure a tight fit.

All done!

For the Heart Wand, I didn't have skinny ribbons in appropriate colors so I used whatever fat trims I found. Just looking at them, I knew they would never stay glued on the stick just by themselves. So I laid them side-by-side, slightly overlapping, and sewed across their top edge to secure them together first

and then wrapped them around the appropriate point on the glued dowel. They went around 2-3 times!

Insert the dowel with glue as with the Flower Wand

and hand-stitch the huge opening shut and tucking in whatever fabric is necessary to get a snug fit around the dowel-and-ribbons. Embellish how you like it - I stuck on gems just because I had some left over from the crowns.

For the Sun Wand, I decided trailing ribbons might be overkill so finishing it up is as simple as sticking the gluey dowel into the sun shape

and stitching the opening snugly shut around it.

If you have loads of time to spare, you might like to paint

the dowels before inserting them. It occurred to me that the

bare wood, if suitably color-coordinated with the felt tops,

would give a very finished look, but I was already dangerously

sidetracked from my other projects by making these,

so I left them as they were.

Finished

11:42 pm: I snipped the last ribbon and laid the scissors 

down on my sewing table. The Dress-up Box is finished. 

I thought this day would never come. No pictures tonight, 

though, because it is so late. Tomorrow I will post 

something colorful so check back. 

Good night, all!

Dress-up Box: Masks

Three masks for the Box. 

They are simple and relatively quick to make. 

So here is a tutorial.

You will need (for each mask)

• Felt for the front of the mask
  
• Fleece for the back
  
• Some soft material for the elastic casing
  
• Elastic -mine was about 14" long and 3/8" wide
  
• Fusible interfacing
  

Draw out a pattern or use mine here:

Step 1

• Cut the front piece (felt) to size, but do not cut the eyeholes out.
  
• Cut the piece of interfacing to size and iron it onto the felt.
  
• Cut the back piece (fleece) larger than the felt piece.
  
• If there are any additional felt layers, cut those out to size and cut the eyeholes out.
  

The thing to remember is that the mask will have many layers. Cut out the eyeholes only in the topmost layer. You can cut the lower layer eyeholes later - it will be easier than trying to align eyeholes of different layers in the sewing process. In the picture below, I did not cut the eyeholes out of the green/teal mask yet because the two halves are held together only by the interfacing and I planned to secure them together with stitching first.

Step 2
Construct the elastic casing.

Here I was experimenting with various fabrics: green chiffon, black satin cut on the straight, and pink satin cut on the bias.

Essentially you need a rectangle about 18" long and 1.5" wide. Fold in half lengthwise, sew a 1/4" seam allowance along the length and turn turn inside out. Stuff the elastic in with a small safety pin. Secure the elastic inside the tube at both ends with stitching.

You should get a wiggly tube like this:
unless, like me, you cut the rectangle on the bias, in which case you would get a weird smooth tube like this:

Working on the white and pink masquerade mask:

Step 3

• Sew the white felt and fleece pieces together.
  
• Trim the excess fleece away around the edge.
  

Step 4

• Attach the elastic casing to both ends of the mask from the back. Attach the ends about 1" in from the edge of the mask. To decide how long the elastic case should be, you will need to measure around your child's head where the mask will be worn and get the best fit.
  

A close-up of the attachment point.

Step 5

• Position the pink top layer on the front and top-stitch around the edge of the pink layer. If you were careful in the earlier step (I wasn't), the pink layer should hide the stitching of the attachment point.
  

Step 6
Top-stitch on the pink layer around the eyeholes.

Step 7

• Cut out the eyeholes in the lower layers.
  
• Trim more of the fleece away if you did a shoddy job of it earlier (like I did).
  

Step 8
Embellish.


Step 9

• Working on the split green/teal mask, begin by running a row of zigzag stitches along the join between the two colors (scroll down to see these stitches in the picture in Step 11). 
• Then embellish with embroidery. 
• Cut out the eyeholes.

Step 10

Attach the elastic casing to just the back of the fleece layer. This is to avoid the stitching of the attachment point from being visible in the front of the mask. As with the white mask, attach the ends about 1" in from the edge of the mask.

Step 11

• Position the felt layer above the fleece layer and top-stitch along the edge and around the eyeholes as with the white mask. 
• Cut out the eyeholes in the fleece layer and trim away the excess fleece.
  

The completed mask

Step 12

With the superhero mask, position all the layers as shown and top-stitch around the edge of the black felt, then around the eyeholes.

Step 13

• Trim away the excess fleece just around the ends of the mask (where the elastic case will be attached), then sandwich the end of the elastic case between the red felt and fleece layers. 
• Top stitch around the edge of the red felt, catching the elastic case ends on both attachment points as you stitch.
  

The picture on the left shows how the elastic case is attached 

in the superhero mask. This allows the mask to wrap around 

the wearer's face fully. It is different from the way the casing 

is attached in the other two masks (other picture), because 

we don't want the elastic to pull the corners of those 

masks back when they are worn. 

The completed superhero mask.

I did think of sewing a superhero cape also, but there already 

are big pieces of cape-like fabric in the Box that the girls can 

drape over their shoulders. But if they want a cape that fastens 

around their necks, I will work on one after Christmas. 

Here's a great tutorial and pattern for that.

Silhouette Pictures

Taking an intermission from the Dress-Up Box this week. 

With Christmas so soon, I really have no business being 

sidetracked but my sewing machine and I are wrestling 

with something especially challenging now (much 

gnashing of teeth) which makes me naturally want to 

start a hundred new projects simultaneously.

Mum and Dad are celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary 

this Sunday so I made some silhouette pictures of the girls for 

them. The girls helped by posing (Kate was not cooperative) 

so I could take photos of their profiles.

I think there is something rather Alfred Hitchcock-ish 

about Kate's but I am assuming it's something all babies 

share. She looks better in real life!

Note: see sidebar under "Projects I'd Like to Do Someday" for a link to one of many tutorials on this.

Felt Board

More procrastinating - made a couple of felt boards last week. 

One for a friend and one for the girls. Thought of waiting till 

Christmas to present it to Emily and Jenna but they were 

restless last weekend and needed a distraction. 

So they got an early Christmas gift.

There are many different versions of felt boards to make 

- some are plywood, some felt mounted in a wall frame, 

some with no backing so they can be rolled up like mats, 

and some even on pizza boxes (for travel). Ingenious! 

Was too busy to make a tutorial, especially since there are 

so many excellent ones on blogs everywhere, 

but here's a quick description of what I did:

I used a 20" x 30" foam core board (1/4" thick) and sprayed one side with spray-on adhesive. Then I stuck on felt and left a 2" border to wrap around the other side. I sprayed adhesive on the other side, pressed the border down flat, then sprayed more adhesive over everything to attach a second color of felt, making a double sided board. This second piece of felt was bigger than the board, so I trimmed away the excess when it was dry. The edges and corners took a little UHU glue to ensure they really stayed stuck down.

So this board has a daytime side

and a night-time side.

Emily wanted to play Sunday School so here is Jonah 

getting swallowed by a big fish, watched by a relieved 

sailor on the boat he just left.

and here is the felt version of 

Ms. Potato Head, Cyclops Princess.

If you make this and want ideas for felt cutouts, 

try the felt board posts at 

Chasing Cheerios, 

Three Sneaky Bugs, 

A Miracle To Me, 

Scrumdilly-do and 

Let's Explore.

 

Outgoing Mail

We spent the morning today visiting the home of two friends 

and their little boys. They had some gifts for the girls and the 

mum, a very crafty person herself, made these delightful 

gift tags with her sons. Cute, cute, cute.

We brought her a felt board identical to the one the girls have. 

We assumed she wasn't a fabric hoarder like I am and supplied 

her with multicolored felt sheets and the land- and sea-scapes 

for future felt board activities. 

We also brought along another mail-drop cardboard mailbox 

and two small personal mailboxes for her boys. I enjoyed the 

construction process of these especially because Emily was 

with me making her own cardboard thing (a house). I had to 

interrupt my own project numerous times to cut tape, help 

her hold the walls of her house in place and squeeze glue for 

her but it was so much fun to watch her make something 

out of cardboard in the same manic way her mom does. 

Along with the cardboard stuff, we supplied 

two mailbags for the little mailmen

and a mail kit containing self-inking stamps, envelopes, 

index cards ("postcards"), square stickers ("stamps") and 

labels ("address labels"). Emily was very enthusiastic about 

demonstrating how everything worked 

and Kate ate some of the stickers.

Updated 2019 to add: in response to many requests for instructions to make the cardboard mailchute, there is now a 2-in-1 pattern you can purchase here. Included are instructions to make that mailchute as well as a fabric mailbag for mail carrier/post office pretend play!