Tag: Felt

Safari Animals

Making the little safari themed animals that dangle beneath a mobile.

It’s been a while, but I have been making things every now and again.

My colleague is going on maternity leave soon and she wanted to make a little Safari themed mobile for the crib. She asked me if I could make some safari animals and she would assemble the mobile. So I looked around on the internet and found a lot of options. I was especially inspired by the Puzzle Animals from ‘Felt with love designs‘ but I didn’t really like those specific patterns. So down the pinterest rabbit hole I went. The plan was to create some puzzle animals with two different colours of felt, with one colour being the main outside colour, and other being the middle layer that would appear in some small area(s). In the end, I made a lion, a giraffe, a zebra, an elephant and a rhino.

There was still a large amount of felt in the stash, so I looked around for the colours that seemed most suitable for each animal. The lion was of course yellow, with an orange mane. The giraffe was brown with less bright orange spots on its back. The zebra was white with black stripes. Since I didn’t want to double colours, I had to make some less realistic choices for the elephant and the zebra. The elephant ended up in a darker grey with blue ears, and the rhino was light purple with light grey horns. There was some faffing about with cutting outsides and insides and adhering them together. Then I sewed around the outline for some extra strength. The legs and elephant ears were connected to the bodies with a little extra thread, for security. Those can still be removed if someone wants to play ‘exchange the legs’.

The example mobiles also had some leaves, so I looked around for leaf templates. Luckily there are a lot of those around and I found some cute ones. Some monstera leaves were cut from a light green felt. Some more temperate leaves were cut from dark green felt. All the little green strings you see were there to indicate the midpoint, weight-wise, for the little leaves and critters.

My colleague has since finished the mobile and I hope it’ll bring all of them much joy!

Road Maps

Making some felt roads for a kids adventure.

As explained at the Play Mat, I had my heart set on roads. So eventually, I decided to make felt roads sections that could be placed any which way. While looking around, I found some templates for paper/laminated roads and decided those were a good starting point. Of course, I made some changes. First, I wanted all the roads to be 10 cm wide, the ones in the template were just about not 10 cm, so this meant some readjusting. Then I decided I wanted everything to be in increments of 10-20-30, so I cut off pieces here and added some there to achieve that. With the shapes decided, I cut them out of my felt. The result is 1 roundabout, 1 crossing, 2 t-splits, 4 bends, 2 long curvy roads, 4 long straight roads, 4 short straight roads, and one.. parking lot? An end bit that I felt would be stupid to waste.

When they were cut out, I really wanted to add road markers too. I first tried by fusing some felt to the top, but it was easily pluck-off-able and I decided that wasn’t good for a young person. So I turned to the next option, fabric paint. Since the Netherlands was still in lockdown, it had to be ordered online and I just hoped it would work. Turns out, it does. I made some more templates, cut out the sections where I wanted markings to be and got to painting. Every section then needed to be ironed for 5 minutes. This seems like a long time and my iron has an auto-off function so I don’t know if they have been ironed ‘enough’. However, I also test painted some numbers onto a shirt and popped it in the laundry and they didn’t come off, so I called it good. I hope that they will be useful for some time to come.

VIKINGS!

Sunday marked the fifth day in a row that I finished a project. On Wednesday the graduation dress, on Thursday the shrug, on Friday the purple Viking, on Saturday the red Viking and on Sunday a dress/sweater (which you will read about once I get the person who will be wearing it (hopefully) in it). Let me now explain why we made two Vikings.

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The University I work for has a very nice international recruitment officer who happens to be my friend. She travels around the world spreading the word and talking to lots of nice people. She regularly takes pictures of the places she is at for us to put on Facebook, but the umpteenth picture of obligatory brochure stand was getting a little much. So a while ago we thought up the plan to have her take a little Viking along on her travels. Why a Viking? The student association has a Viking as their mascot, since, apparently, the Vikings landed close to here when they first arrived in the Netherlands. Fine with us, a Viking it is.

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Now, trying to find a nice Viking proved to be a little more difficult than expected. On Thursday they googled Viking plushy and I was tasked with creating a pattern to make a nice Viking. Turned out that playing with paper and tape trying to create a Viking was a lot of fun! So in the end we had 8 or so pattern pieces and a shopping list of felt colours to obtain. Returning with off-white, light grey, darker grey, beige-ish and red felt, black fuzz, black eyes and a school pin, we planned to create the Viking on Saturday.

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On Friday after the ceremony, I wasn’t ready to go to bed yet, so I decided to test the pattern with some of my own felt (cheap felt, in horrid colours). This was the birth of the purple Viking. I learned a few things, like, sew the back of the bottom, not the side by hand for turning inside out. Clip close to the stitching on those horns or you’ll never be able to turn it. And, fuzz leaves more fuzz, especially pink fuzz on a dark blue skirt – not pretty. It turned out pretty nice so I was confident enough to try it on Saturday with the pattern we made.

Purple test Viking with pink fuzz, pretending to be in France.
Purple test Viking with pink fuzz, pretending to be in France.

The recruiting friend came by and we set out, first cut all the pieces, then sewed some bits together by machine and by hand, plucked fuzz of everything, inserted some eyes, sewed front and back together, turned the horns outside out and stuffed them, attached the oval bottom, turned it outside out completely, stuffed it even more, added the pin, closed the hole in the bottom and took some pictures. A Viking was born. He is a lot prettier than the first Viking I made. Now we just have to wait and see how he holds up to the wear and tear of travelling to at least 5 countries in the coming 5 weeks. And whether he’s received well in the (international) community. Fingers or horns crossed!

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