Each train carriage has grooves that must have once held something that you could slip in and out, but this wasn't part of the purchase so I decided to make my own. This was the result. A perfect stocking filler for the Little Imp!
Part of this project was playing around with my sewing machine and some free motion embroidery. I had a go using this to attach the felt letters to the fabric backgrounds and although I have a way to go until I am happy to embroider something a bit more special, I was surprised that it wasn't as hard to do as I expected.
Although I have made these little fabric letter cards to fit into the train carriages, they would also be great for kids for lots of other things - attach magnets for sticking on the fridge, adapt as a memory game or shape recognition with different felt symbols....
Basic 'How To'
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| Cut out cardboard, background fabric and felt letters |
- Measure and cut pieces of firm cardboard (e.g. from a box) to the size you want
- Measure and cut your background fabric (here from blue & orange spotted patterns) - it needs to be double the length of the card with approx 1-2cm seam allowance all around
- Cut out letters (or shapes/ symbols) from felt to fit the card
- Sew the felt letter onto the bottom half of the background fabric, positioning it to allow for bottom and side seams in the next step. This is where I played around with free motion embroidery, but you could do this with a standard machine stitch or by hand)
- Fold each piece of background fabric in half, wrong sides together. Using the cut cardboard pieces as a guide, mark the position for the side seams leaving a few extra millimeters on each side. Then machine straight stitch up each side along these marks.
- Trim side seams and turn right side out
- Slip cardboard piece into fabric pocket that you have created
- Slip stitch the bottom seam closed
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| Pieces from left to right demonstrating steps 4 - 8 |
