Monday, November 9, 2009

Felt Food Inspiration for Christmas

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A couple of years ago, I spent several weeks laboriously hand sewing this set of felt food for L, who was then two. My husband thought I was weird, figuring that a kid who had a house full of toys probably wouldn't be that impressed. He was wrong.
When I gave L the set for Christmas, he loved it. In fact, while I can't remember much about what we bought him that year, I do remember that this stuff, and the felt finger puppets I sewed for him were very well received. A couple of months ago, I tossed most of theses pieces, because the kids had played with them, and chewed on them for several years, and the stuffing was starting to come out.
(This is totally a side note, but in the lead-contaminated-toy-fiasco a while back, I got uncharacteristically paranoid, and threw away all the kid's plastic toy food. The kids actually mouth on the toys, and that gave me the creeps...)
Anyway, this Christmas the kids will be getting some replacement food. I seem to have misplaced the patterns for most of this stuff, but they're pretty self explanatory. (If I was able to draw up the pattern for these, you surely can. I'm terrible at drawing.) These were sewn with plain old cheapie synthetic felt, and stuffed with polyfil. I packaged them in a little crocheted market bag.
(Wool felt would have been nicer, and maybe lasted longer, but it is expensive, and not as readily available. In hindsight, now that I see how much the kids actually played with the stuff, it might have been worth it. At the time I wasn't sure. )

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Anyway, I'm currently in the middle of sewing up three sets of the Chicken and Salad Party Pattern, by JulyHobby, on Etsy. (One for L, one for V, and one for a niece. Because you know, they can't share...) The roasted chicken with removable appendages is too cute, even if I am a vegetarian. The pattern is easy to follow, and worth the $3.99 it costs.
For additional inspiration, I've been looking through all the great stuff in the Flickr Handmade Felt Food Pool.
There's also this cool thread on Craftster:
http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=222947.0 .
Another cool Craftster post:
http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=261887.0
This post on Snazzle Craft:
http://snazzlecraft.blogspot.com/2009/01/free-felt-food-pattern.html

I'll be posting pictures as I get things finished.

What are you making for the kids this year?

3 comments:

  1. you are so creative!! what cute felt food! Thanks for sharing.

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  2. Darling felt food!!! Makin me hungry for T-Day
    Mama Holli

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  3. I LOVE the turkey. Entirely too cute! I tried my hand at felt food and ended up taking 2 hours to stitch four cookies. So, I really AM impressed. :)

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