I sometimes struggle what to get my nieces and nephew for Christmas. I don't want to inundate them with toys. Sparkly pink clothing items are usually the key for one niece, but I like to give them something a little more.
Enter felt food. They have a play kitchen they all love (ages 1, 5, and 7), but they don't have a lot of food for it. After Thanksgiving dinner, I busted out the felt and embroidery floss. The kids were here, so I actually got some input from them about what they'd like. Note: this has not diminished the gift in the least. Rather, they seem extra thrilled to get to participate and ask for certain items.
Today, I made a broccoli floret, a fried egg, and two cookies. One cookie is below (my niece's sprinkled pink sugar cookie). Not pictured is my nephew's cookie. He was still embroidering a happy face on it while I took the pictures. Both my 5 year old niece and my 7 year old nephew learned a bit of sewing this weekend, and their mom is excited to try at home.
The best part is that my nephew had a wonderful creative idea to put the fried egg into an eggshell so he can "crack" the egg. Genius!
Here is the felt food. The broccoli floret is the first thing I did, and it turned out giant. I think that's the whole head of broccoli. I'm going to experiment with different patterns to see if I can do better next time.
I'm hooked now. This was easy enough to make, and I was able to do so while watching TV.
There's lots of free tutorials and patterns. I free-handed the eggs and the sugar cookies, but I follow a tutorial for broccoli. Here are some that I like and plan on using:
- the broccoli tutorial I'll adapt (I think her dimensions are wrong -- I made smaller florets and they were still way big, or else her other food is giant)
- a creative salad, especially for the cool way she does mushrooms
- Frugal Babe's felt food project and her part 2 and final installment
- a gigantic set of tutorials from Apartment Therapy
- a super cute idea to do ravioli, bow ties, and donuts including take-out bags
One thing is for sure: I'm busting out my sewing machine at home to do more of these. The hand sewing looks cute, and I'm sure I will still do some parts that way, but I think I can just fly if I do machine sewing. I will have to get some more bobbins (and thread in general) and get over my fear of the machine.