Friday, January 16, 2009

Give me enough time and I can make anything, I think......



It's January and it's a new year with a lot of fresh family birthdays coming up. Some months are Birthday Busy and some aren't. I've tried to tell all the families which months are empty so we can put a birth in those month but no luck so far.

January and March are really much too full!



I'd decided to call the grown-ups for birthdays and make something for the kids. Logan was the first January birthday and after a little time looking at supplies and thinking I figured out this cute idea.




The spaces in the letters are white fabric appliqued



Left over card board was cut into alphabet shapes. A front and a back that's 48 pieces to cut out. Then I glued the top cardboard on some cotton batting. I suggest the fast drying white glue. By time I had all the cardboard glued onto the batting the first were dry enough to cut out. I just put a line of glue around the outside shape.


I'm hoping Logan can hang this across his bedroom walls,
I'm including some pins and tacks to rest the ribbon in on.




The next step was to cover them with fabric. I have lots of pieces so I collected a different fabric for each letter. It was fun to cover them. Be sure your pattern for the letters have enough space in the spaces, the G,S,E,F,K,M,N,Q, etc. When you go to cut and fold the fabric in those tiny spaces it gets a bit hard. In some of ours we just put the glue on the side of the cardboard and held it there with a toothpick. This is where fast drying glue is nice.


I took the back cardboard letters and traced it on the back of the fabric so I could cover the batting with fabric. Watch yourself you need the shape of the letter to be traced so the right side of the fabric is going the correct direction for the Alphabet. Pick it all up and see if it is correct before tracing. I trace the letter be sure you leave space 1/2" if possible and cut around all opening and then snip around all the edges so you can fold the edges around the batting and glue it to the back.




The final thing is to hot glue the ribbon to the back top side of the letters, then flip them over and white glue the fresh backs on the fabric fronts. I put big heavy books on top with a piece of wax paper over the letters to protect the books. The heavy books make sure the backs are well glued to that snipped fabric backs.

Well maybe you didn't want to know how to make these, and I didn't do such a good job explaining but they are neat and our 3 year old Logan is already putting them to use.

Oh we made the L.O.G.A.N in the same fabric so he can find his letters easily.

So the count is 1 done 10 to go!

4 comments:

  1. Don't forget June! It now beats out March's 4 birthdays with 5 in June! And we are anticipating the 4th January birthday!

    Logan loves his letters!

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  2. I love the letters! What a fun, cute idea!!

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  3. I like the letter idea as well, I want one for my little girl :) and I like the seperate name idea as well. I need to be mroe creative and do that as well.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Well Anonymous,
    would you like the pattern we made? We made the directions up as we went but I covered most of it on the blog.

    If you are in the Seattle area I can give you cardboard also.

    ReplyDelete

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