Fun with felt

I wanted some fun fridge magnet toys for my one and a half year old son, Owen and was unsuccessful at finding anything age-appropriate. I ended up buying some Melissa and Doug letters which he had a lot of fun sliding to the floor and hiding around the house...so I put them away for later. I decided to use some felt to make my own. I am better at copying than I am at coming up with my own ideas so I searched felt craft images online to get some inspiration.

I decided to make a tree, a kite, a bird and a football. I also cut out pieces to make a house but I thought it looked a little like a gnome so I haven't done that one yet!

So here goes: First, cut out 2 pieces of each thing you want to make. One for the front, and one for the back. Any additional decorative pieces (like the bird wings and the door and windows) only need to be on the front, so you only need one piece. Next, I stitched the decorative pieces onto the front using embroidery thread. Once that is done, you can begin stitching the two pieces together. I recently learned how to do a blanket stitch (which I love!) and thought it worked perfectly here. This is how it's done:

 start from the back and then stick your needle over the top and through the back again, keeping the thread loose. When you come up through the front with your needle and thread, loop it through your previous stitch.

To continue, keep only sticking your needle up 

 through the back and make sure to loop it through your previous stitch. I had to practice a couple of times to get it right.

 This is what it should end up looking like. Make sure you stop before you go all the way around to stuff it a little bit. (Optional. I forgot to stuff my bird!) Every time I chain-stitch, I end up going a different direction. So, unfortunately I can't specify to you whether you will be stitching to the right or left!

After they are stuffed and stitched, all there is left to do is glue the magnet to the back. You can buy magnets at the craft store and hot-glue them to the back. I originally used craft glue and Owen ended up pulling the magnets off. 

There you have it! The kite will probably not last long because the tail has almost been pulled out already, the bird is not stuffed, and the football looks like a leaf, but hey, Owen won't care. Also I just noticed that I forgot to hot-glue on the bird's eye! 

Try it and tell me how it goes!!