Rachel Wolf lives in rural Wisconsin with her husband and two children. Rachel spends her days living her bliss in a swirling cloud of living, playing, homeschooling, mothering, writing, crafting, and work-at-home-mama chaos. Visit her blog Clean or her organic body care business, LuSa Organics.
Felt Crown Tutorial
A felt crown is required play equipment for any young child. With the right crown you can be the queen, the king, the prince, the knight, or the ruler-of-all-that-you-see. We love crowns for birthdays in particular. Nothing makes a child feel more special than birthday fuss plus a special crown (though we tend to wear them daily in our corner of the world as well.)
A homemade crown is something to be cherished and easier to make than you can imagine. I have not provided a proper pattern because I think each crown is best born of your own creativity. You don’t need me to draw the lines for you. (Really. You don’t!) I cut mine free-hand, but if you want to be more precise, cut a sample from paper first to get a feel for it. It’s a crown. For your kid. Don’t over think it and you really can’t mess it up.
The crown below is sized for a child ages 3-6. For an older child just add a pinch of extra length to the elastic.
Ready? Let’s sew.
Materials
Cotton fabric for casing, 3″ x 10″
Wool felt (mine is 60% wool), two pieces 15″ x 5″ each
6″ length of 1/4″ elastic
safety pin
fine glitter (optional)
Process
Sew an elastic casing from cotton. You will sew the seam along the long side. Stitch, turn, and press with seam to the center.
Insert elastic as follows: Fasten a safety pin to one end of elastic. Pull elastic through casing until the elastic tail is even with first opening. Stitch.Pull safety pin, gathering casing, and align the other end of elastic with casing opening. Remove pin and sew.
Cut your crown. Determine which color felt is your background and which is your main color (the front). Fold your background color in half and cut a basic crown shape, with a peak in the center.
Cutting freehand with your shears, shape the basic crown into something more artistic. Wing it. Whatever you create will be lovely! Just let it flow. I folded my fabric in half and cut through both sides at once. (Save your scraps. You’ll need them in a minute.) Hold this modified crown shape up to your child (or even your own head, looking in the mirror) and adjust height and shape as needed.
When you are satisfied with the shape of your crown cut an identical piece out of your second piece of felt. (Lay the already cut crown over the second piece and trace or cut around it.)
Trim off 1/2″ from bottom of the second piece of felt. This will make it smaller and you’ll be able to see the background color all around.
Cut out any embellishments you’d like from the background felt scraps. I prefer to keep it very simple to allow the child to create all the extras in their imagination, but follow your own intuition. Circles, gems, stars, or other simple graphics are ideal.
When you are satisfied with placement, topstitch embellishments into place with matching or contrasting thread onto the main color crown piece.
Pin background crown to main crown panel and carefully sew across top and bottom seams. (Leave sides open for the moment.)
Insert elastic casing with right side facing frontward. Sew. Repeat on second side, being careful not to twist. Your crown is done! For added bling rub with a bit of extra fine glitter. That’ll take it right over the top.
Issue 3 (May) of Whipup.net’s printable Mini-Mag for kids (aged 7+) continues on from issue 1 & 2 by offering more opportunities for learning, fun and experimentation. This ‘Tea & Sew’ themed issue contains instructions & printables for a busy afternoon or two of tea drinking, cooking and sewing: lots of experimenting with flavours, sewing, dyeing and baking. Plus we have included the perfect project to make for Mother’s Day.
Action Pack: A mini-mag for kids who want to do stuff is available in an easy downloadable PDF format, priced at only $5, and with no advertising.
Our philosophy for Action Pack is all about inspiring kids to be creative, to develop and nurture healthy habits, and to feed inquisitive minds, and challenge imaginations. This ‘Action Pack’, is for busy parents and creative energetic kids.
In this pack you will find: a whole heap of projects around the theme ‘Tea & Sew’, with tasting, experimenting with flavours, sewing projects and more.
The instructions to sew a tea cup and jam tarts.
A recipe with variations to make your own tea flavoured cookies.
Make sun tea, herbal ice tea and spiced chai.
Instructions to tea dye fabric and make a personalised hand sewn tea cosy.
Lots of information and facts about tea traditions around the world.
Plus a bonus Mother’s Day project.
Our philosophy: - We see kids as competent, creative and capable people. - We believe that our kids are resourceful and clever and we try to enable them to develop their independence and creative minds within a secure and nurturing environment. - We see learning opportunities everywhere. Learning should and can be fun. - But we also know that parents are busy and cannot realistically be spending all weekend ‘playing’ with their kids. - We want kids to get off the couch, away from the computer and learn the value and fun in making and doing stuff.
Instructions: After you have purchased the Action Pack you will receive an email with the link to where you can download the pdf. This is a 48 hour link – Save it straight away onto your computer and then it print out at your liesure. It is a full colour 25 page document – but you can print the pages as you need them. You can also print out the whole pack and bind it and store it in a folder to be used over and over. For optimum quality choose ‘best quality’ when printing, especially for the pages with illustrations. However feel free to print it out in black and white too.
Contact for more information: Action-pack@whipup.net
Issue 2 (April) of Whipup.net’s printable Mini-Mag for kids (aged 7+) is bigger and better than issue 1 – if that is even possible.
Action Pack is available in an easy downloadable PDF format. Priced at only $5, and with no advertising, this month’s issue is jam packed with 25 pages of projects – with a Seeds & Beads theme for the new planting season – inside you will find craft projects, gardening projects, science, cooking, drawing and more, everything a kid needs for a weekend (or two) of activities. Plus – a bonus 4 pages of Easter cooking and experimenting!
Our philosophy for Action Pack is all about inspiring kids to be creative, to develop and nurture healthy habits, and to feed inquisitive minds, and challenge imaginations. This ‘Action Pack’, is for busy parents and creative energetic kids.
In this pack you will find: a whole slew of projects around the theme Seeds & Beads, with lots of delicious cooking, science experiments, simple craft projects and outdoor activities.
Instructions to make garden lanterns and beaded dragonflies to decorate your garden.
Instructions to show you how-to draw realistic and cartoon dragonflies – the good insect!. Plus lots of fun facts and interesting information throughout.
How to grow seeds – make seed bombs, recycled plant containers and bird seed treats to attract birds to your garden + printable seed packets to save and store your seeds.
Learn all about how to use edible seeds in your cooking, make cakes, crackers and salad sprinkles as well as a refreshing Lavender Lemonade!
Plus an a bonus Easter supplement with a recipe for Hot Cross Spice Buns and Experiments with naturally dyeing eggs.
Our philosophy: - We see kids as competent, creative and capable people. - We believe that our kids are resourceful and clever and we try to enable them to develop their independence and creative minds within a secure and nurturing environment. - We see learning opportunities everywhere. Learning should and can be fun. - But we also know that parents are busy and cannot realistically be spending all weekend ‘playing’ with their kids. - We want kids to get off the couch, away from the computer and learn the value and fun in making and doing stuff.
Instructions: After you have purchased the Action Pack you will receive an email with the link to where you can download the pdf. This is a 24 hour link – Save it onto your computer and then print out. It is a full colour 30 page document – but you can print the pages as you need them. You can also print out the whole pack and bind it and store it in a folder to be used over and over. For optimum quality choose ‘best quality’ when printing, especially for the pages with illustrations. However feel free to print it out in black and white too.
Contact for more information: Action-pack@whipup.net
Holly has a super easy and cute idea for pressies – make some spelling bean bags for the little kiddos in your life. – If the whole alphabet is too much – why not make some fun words to play with.
