How To: Felt Weaving - Rainbow Drinks Coaster Tutorial

Happy Summer Holidays!

We're currently enjoying a couple of weeks staying with the grandparents in Ireland, so beaches, lots of being spoiled by Nanny and board games contests are predicted in our futures!

While we're here, I wanted to share a tutorial with you for the 'Thank You' gifts the kids made for their teachers this year - Rainbow Felt Woven Coasters.

This is a great craft for kids of all ages and abilities as you can tailor the challenge to suit their capabilities. As we were short on time (having, as always, left the present making till the last week of term!) I did most of the hard work prep and the kids did the assembly.

You Will Need:

A square paper template (about 5" x 5")

1 piece of felt for the base

5 strips of coloured felts (about 0.75" wide and twice as long as as the square)

glue

A heavy book.

Instructions:

1. Using a sharp pair of scissors, cut 6 straight lines from top to bottom in your base piece of felt, starting 0.75" down from the top and stopping 0.75" from the bottom. Starting with the red piece (if you are using the same colours we did - Red, Orange, Yellow, Green & Blue/Purple) weave the red felt strip in and out of the base piece.

2. Continue with each felt strip, alternating under and over so you have a chequer board look. Wiggle each strip up tight to the one above so that all the strips fit into the base piece. Make sure you have a good length overhanging at each end.

3. Trim the ends, so that on both sides the felt strips match up to the base piece.

4. Add a dot of glue to the end of each strip to secure the felt in place to the base piece. Weigh the coasters down with a heavy book while the glue dries. (Preferably leave overnight) As you can see by the picture below, we tried to keep the ends in place with clips, but it leaves dents in the felt once dried, so the book technique was dreamed up after the first two coasters were made.

5. Wander off and leave Mummy to do all the clearing up!!

Hope you like this one - a great one to try with the kids over the holidays and good for stash busting!

We'd love to see any pictures of things you make from our tutorials, so please do send them to us at: simmi@gracesfavours.co.uk

Great Crafts for Children's Birthday Parties

You may remember I posted a while ago about a birthday party I was asked to host for a group of 9 year olds at our local craft shop. The first party I did was a bit hit and miss because I'd not thought through how much help the girls might need and how awkward it would be without patterns for them to follow, so this time I was prepared.

I made a sample of the what they were going to make:

The bags I pre-cut with the folds marked and I had a selection of buttons, hair bands (for the closure loop), cord for the straps and hama beads so they could make hang tags.

Again this was a 9 year old's party and with the exception of one of the girls, they all had a fairly good idea of sewing so although they needed help with threading their needles and knotting the thread, they were all off and raring to go.

They all chose to start with creating their hang tags and then moved onto making the bags and here are their results:

The girls had great fun making their bags, they all wore them home (although two escaped before I could take photos!) and the Mum's seemed really pleased with what they had made.

I think in hindsight 2 hours would have been better than an hour and a half and I could have staggered them so they didn't all get to the same stage at the same time, but it was a really fun afternoon and I will be actively promoting them now as I feel like I was quite happy in my comfort zone (much more so than last time!)

If you were thinking of holding a party at home for children aged 7 - early teens creating something like this would be perfect - but be prepared for a big mess to clear up and the kids needing a lot of help!!

How to Make Your Own Diwali Crafts

Happy Diwali!!

I've just spent the morning with my daughter's reception class and my son's pre-school class experiencing Diwali with 35 children - it was loud, chaotic, messy and great fun - just like all my experiences of Diwali!

I should probably explain, although I don't really look it, I am half Indian. My Dad is a Sikh and although he was born in England my Grandparents moved to London from the Punjab (which was then part of India, although now is part of Pakistan) in the 1940s during Partition.

I love all things Indian and it plays a big part in our lives, especially as we now live in Gloucestershire which is an area that doesn't have a lot of the culture locally, so we have to make sure that our children experience it at home.

So for Diwali, we have all the candles in the house lit, we decorate the patio with rangoli patterns (although yesterday was a bit too wet, so we'll have to do it tonight after school) and we eat traditional Indian sweets (a real luxury as they are so rich normally we don't have them - or none of us would be able to move for a week!)

Rangoli patterns are usually made from coloured rice flour

Diwali is the festival of light to welcome home Rama & Sita from the Forest

Gulab Jamun Sweets

So today I took into School some of these delicious Gulab Jamun sweets, bought specially at the weekend, they are sinfully rich, but so yummy - most of the children were happy to try them although not all of them liked them, but my two had second helpings (of course!)

The activities that their lovely teacher came up with included making clay pots, called Divas which hold the candles, traditionally lit to welcome Rama & Sita back from the Forest. These were made from air drying clay, which was rolled into sausage shapes and then curled round in a spiral to form the base, then another sausage shape was curled round to form the walls. Lastly some sparkly sequins and blingy hearts were added to decorate the pots.

Patrick's Diva

Seren's Diva

They coloured in colourful hands to depict the mendhi patterns drawn onto ladies hands with henna and the made rangoli patterns on the playground with coloured powder paint. The hands were made from coloured paper which the teacher had cut out and then they copied (ish!) some tradition mendhi patterns using felt pens.

The kids LOVED it! I'm so pleased to have been able to be a part of their day and really pleased to be able to share some of my heritage with a group of children who otherwise probably wouldn't have any connection to this festival.