Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Tutorial: Felt food corned beef & cabbage

I've been fiddling with this set for the last few days, but I'm calling it done now. I'm especially pleased with how the cabbage turned out!

Felt food corned beef and cabbage, now with texture!

And now, in honor of the feast of St. Patrick (coming up one week from today!), I'm sharing a tutorial with zillions of images so you can make your very own. All I ask is that if you use my tutorial to make things, you not sell them, and if you post my tutorial anywhere, please include a link back to this blog entry.

In the pictures below, I use *contrasting* thread so you can more easily follow along. When you make your own items, I recommend using thread that will blend in with the color of felt you are sewing.

If you need to see a larger version of a picture, just click on it and you will be taken to that photo at flickr.

Materials
  • scissors
  • thread
  • polyfil
  • felt in these colors, 1 sheet each:
    ivory
    camel (tan)
    cardinal (darkish red)
    orange
    light green (sometimes sold as neon green or lime green)


supplies

Potatoes

Cut out three circles of ivory and three circles of camel/tan
Ivory felt: 3 1/4 inches across
Camel felt: 2 1/4 inches across

potato1

Hand sew around the edge of an ivory circle, but do not knot it off yet.

potato2

Instead, pull your thread to cinch the circle together into a little pouch.

potato3

Stuff the pouch firmly with polyfil, then sew across the opening several times, pulling tightly to close it securely.

potato4

potato5

potato6

potato7

Now you can knot and trim your thread.

This is your potato! Isn't it cute? But now we need to cover up the fugly opening we just stitched up. Get one of your camel circles and center it there.

potato8

Your potato will hold pins very nicely if you just push them straight in, like a pincushion. Pull the "skin" up around your potato and place pins evenly around the edge to keep it in place.

potato9

Now you can hand-sew the skin to the potato. Use small stitches, pull the thread evenly, and they should blend into the felt nicely.

potato10

Stitch all the way around, knot your thread, and hide the knot down in the skin.

Repeat this process with the rest of your circles to complete three potatoes.

potato11

Carrots

Fold felt in half. Draw two carrot outlines, about 3 inches long and 1 inch
wide, with a rounded end.

carrots1

Stitch along each line, leaving the other ends of the carrots open.

carrots2

Cut out the carrots and turn them right-side-out.

carrots3

Stuff with polyfil. Hand sew around the top but do not knot it off yet.

carrots4

Add additional polyfil if needed, then pull your thread to cinch the end
closed. Stitch across the opening several times, pulling tightly to keep the
end closed-off.

carrots5

Now you can knot and trim your thread. Your carrots are done!

Cabbage

Cut out three rectangles of ivory felt and two of light green felt. Mine
are about 2 inches by 4 inches. Keep in mind we will be bunching them up,
so don't make them too short.

cabbage1

Hand sew lengthwise down the middle of one of the ivory rectangles, but do
not knot the thread.

cabbage2

Pull the thread to bunch the rectangle together so that it is wrinkly and wavy, like cabbage!

cabbage3

Then knot it off and repeat with the other four rectangles.

cabbage4

To give some extra strength to the cabbage, I machine-stitched two of the ivory pieces together, as well as one of the ivory and one of the light green to each other. (Black thread in photos is from hand sewing, red is from machine. As I mentioned previously, you should use a thread color that will blend in.)

cabbage5

Then sandwich the remaining light green piece between your machine-stitched pairs. I stack them so it's ivory-ivory-green-ivory-green, but feel free to play around with other combinations. Now hand sew all five layers together, along either side of the center lines.

cabbage6

Your cabbage is done!

Corned beef

Fold your cardinal (dark red) felt into thirds. Machine-stitch several parallel-ish lines to give your meat some texture.

beef1

You'll need to cover an area that's about 4.5 inches by 4.5 inches.

beef2

I generally do this next sewing part freehand, but you could outline your slices of meat, so long as it's with something you can easily remove from the felt afterwards. Machine-stitch the outline of three slices of meat, about 3 inches long and 1 inch wide, with some variation in the rounding of the corners etc, so it looks like slices of brisket and not square stuff from a can or something.

beef3jpg

Remember, you should not be using contrasting thread for your own!

beef4

Also remember, you want your corned beef to look natural, not like regular little rectangles.

canned

Cut out your corned beef, plate it up with your veggies, and enjoy!

Felt food corned beef and cabbage, now with texture!

Sunday, March 8, 2009

What's for dinner

When making felt food, for some reason breakfast items always spring to mind. Mostly eggs. Eggs are so easy. And then eventually you move on to dessert. Faux chocolate is delightful to play around with! But ultimately you realize you need to create something more substantial. Dinner.

So... I've trying to think of more dinnerish felt food things to make. I have a bit of a list I've started. I'm stuck on a couple of things because I'm dissatisfied with the colors of felt I have, but I'm going to keep those ideas to myself for now, as I'm determined to have a go at them anyway and I'd like it to be a surprise ;)

Today I tackled one that uses pretty standard colors. Ivory, red... and the color of fried things, which I hadn't gotten around to using yet. Gold or goldenrod, depending which brand of felt you're using.

And here's the result, chicken parmesan:

chickparm3

I think it looks best with the sauce and cheese sewn on, but for smallish kids it's probably more fun to be able to take it apart and put it together yourself.

chickparm1

And if you've still got room for dessert, the Easter cookies are ready :)

Felt food Easter cookies

Felt food Easter cookies