Car, Boat, Train Fabric Bookends Tutorial

My husband and I are both bookworms. To instil the same love of reading into our kids, we have a growing collection of kids books. When decorating my son’s room, I wanted some bookends to go with the transport theme, but really couldn’t find anything I liked. So what is a craft blogger to do, but make her own.

I seem to have decided to make his room matchy-matchy. I used the same templates and fabric as the appliques on his quilt cover and wall art.

Here is the full tutorial for the boat. You can follow the same steps to create the train or car (or any other shape you like…)

Materials

Fabric:

• 15inch x 7.5inch for boat (I used a dark green quilter’s cotton)
• 10inch x 5 inch sails (Mod Squares in Leaf from Monaluna Mingle)
• white for the “background” (Quilter’s cotton again)
• 27inch x 3inch strip for the outside (I used New Traditions Stripe in Chartreuse from Robert Kaufman)
• Small scrap of white felt

Medium or Heavy-weight interfacing
Heat’n’bond lite (or equivalent)
Polyfill or other type of stuffing
Mini Zip-Lock Bag
Handful of rice/lentils or other beanie-type filling
Sticky-mat drawer liner
Sewing machine
Thread
Scissors and/or rotary knife
Glue

Instructions

Print out the template from here.

Cut 2 pieces of medium weight interfacing 7.5inch x 7.5inch (or one piece 15 x 7.5inch – I was working with scraps!) and iron onto fabric for the main boat.

Draw boat shape onto interfacing using the template from this post. I then simplified it a bit so there wouldn’t be so many corners and curves

With fabric doubled over and right sides together, cut out 2 boat shapes, adding a 1/2inch seam allowance on all sides.

 

Iron Heat and Bond onto the back of the white fabric. Draw the “background” sections of pattern onto the paper side of the Heat and Bond and cut out. For the boat, this was 2 strips 3 inch long and a little more than 1/2inch wide, and another two strips 3.5inch long and a little more than 1/2inch wide. The pieces extend into the seam allowance.

Iron heat and bond onto back of fabric for the sail. Place sail fabric in position on main boat piece, next to the mast. Carefully flip over and outline the boat piece.

  

Cut out the sail pieces. Cut out a second set of sails the mirror image of the first (ie cut with right sides together).

  

Remove backing paper from Heat and Bond. Position the sails onto the boat and iron into place.

  

Overlap the white background just a little over the sail and iron into place. Don’t worry if the pieces don’t line up perfectly on the outside as it will be sewn in the seam allowance.

Sew around the edge of the sail and white space with a small zigzag stitch. This is optional, but I think it looks a bit neater (and makes them more durable when the Little Man starts throwing them around!). Don’t bother with sewing the sections in the seam allowance. I used a stitch width of 2.0 and length of 0.5, but test it out on a scrap of fabric to make sure you’re happy with how it looks.

Iron interfacing onto the wrong side of the material for the outside strip of the bookend.

Cut 3inch wide strips of material for around the outside (for the boat, it’s approximately 27 inches. If you are making a different shape, measure the outside of the shape and add 1inch for each “corner”).

Cut sections of fabric the width of each “side of the boat” (It makes more sense if you look at the picture!). Make sure there is a 1/2inch seam allowance for each section to overlap!

Draw the outline of boat on the back of the second boat side of the bookend using the cutaway sections of the template. This really helps when sewing it together! Make a clip in the seam allowance at each corner.

  

Cut two flag shapes from white felt. Pin into place on each boat shape (onto the right side of the fabric).

Sew each strip on to one of the boats. Only sew along the actual seam line – do not sew into the seam allowances. This is important to get nice sharp box corners!

When you are sewing the strips on, make sure you fold the previous section out of the way, so you don’t sew across it. Each new section starts exactly where the last one finished so you end up stitching all the way around the boat outline (but only along the boat outline!).

  

At this point it will look like a mess of fabric, but trust me, it will come together soon…

Sew each side strip to the one next to it, sewing from the already sewn side to the edge of the seam allowance edge (1/2 inch from end). Once again, this ensures sharp corners on the bookend.

(Mental note: next time use contrasting thread)

See, it’s slowly making sense…

Now it’s time to sew the other side of the boat into place. Once again, line up each “side” of the boat with the corresponding strip and sew into place only along the outline of the boat (and not into the seam allowances). Leave a large opening  (2-3 inch) in the bottom of the boat to turn it inside out (or outside out to be precise!). I always make this too small because I hate hand-stitching!

Trim the seam allowance at the corners. Cross your fingers and turn the boat right-way out (which is a real challenge when your opening is too small!).

Since it’s a bit difficult to iron, “finger press” the seams. That is pinch and run your fingers along each edge to get it to sit right.

Stuff with polyfill through the opening, making sure you push it into all the corners, but don’t quite fill all the way.

Put enough rice (or other bean-type material) to cover the bottom of the boat into a small zip lock bag.

Poke the bag of rice through the opening in the boat (once again, it’s a challenge if your opening isn’t big enough!), and then lay the rice bag flat along the bottom of the boat. Stuff a bit more polyfill in, if necessary. Then hand-stitch the opening closed (using really ugly stitching, if you hate hand-sewing…).

Cut a strip of sticky-mat drawer liner slightly smaller than the base of the bookend.

Apply the glue to the sticky-mat and position the base of the bookend. Then apply even more glue (I always use way too much glue!). Note: I used a run-of-the-mill craft glue.

Wait for the glue to dry, then sail away with your boat bookend.

If you use this tutorial, let me know in the comments or send me an email! And if you have any questions, let me know too!

Tutorial: Felt Car Play Mat/House

Who can we find behind the doors and windows of this little red house?

     

Open it up…

…and what do we see…

   

…and a whole little world awaits:

 

Materials:

25x30 inch (62.5 x 75cm) piece of green craft felt
2 sheets of red felt
1 sheet of blue felt
Medium weight iron-on interfacing
Sheets/scraps of different colours of felt
Tacky craft glue
Velcro
Scissors
Quilters chalk
Thread, sewing machine or needle to hand sew

Instructions:

I started with a sketch of the layout (sorry, no fancy drafting software here ), and worked out the dimensions based on the green felt I’d bought by the metre at my local craft chain. (For some reason, I’m working in inches here although I grew up with metric system – go figure!)

Mark the layout from the sketch onto the felt with chalk and cut around the outside.

   

Cut out long black strips approximately 2 inches wide for the roads (I went with straight roads rather than curvy roads for simplicity, but go crazy with what suits you!). Arrange on the play mat and glue in place. Cut out 1/2 inch wide strips of white felt for the centre lines on the road, and glue in place. (Sorry, no progress photos here – I’m sure you can imagine!)

Cut out various buildings etc from different coloured felt pieces and glue in place (when you’re happy with the layout).  The play mat will fold up better if you don’t have anything stuck across the fold lines (which I had marked out in chalk).

I put way too much thought in the layout – Police station as you come into town (as a warning to visitors), petrol station as you leave town, can’t have the hospital next to the construction site (although I’m not sure next to a zoo is that good!), car park across the road from the shops, farm on the edge of town and on and on I went…

Here are some photos of the details:

Train Station and Lake	Hospital with Helipad
Zoo	Police Station
Construction Site	Fire and Petrol (Gas) Stations
Swimming Pool	Farm and Playground
Supermarket (Coles)  and Hardware Store (Bunnings)	Row of houses
Car park	Garden

I didn’t make templates for any of these, but you should be able to work them out from the pictures. If you’d like any more details or a sketch or two, let me know in the comments or send me an email. I hand cut everything with sewing shears and a craft knife (no fancy cutting machine here!). I used string for the chains on the swing and marked the clock on the train station with a regular ball point pen. Everything else I just cut straight from the felt, or drew on with a quilt chalk pen or disappearing fabric marker before cutting.

A few tips: have a container to put your felt scraps into where you are working and another container for pieces to small to use. I was constantly trimming and those little pieces went everywhere! Also, don’t trim over another piece of felt – that wonderful property of felt sticking to itself is a big nuisance if you do! (Trust me, I made both these mistakes more than once!)

Make cuts along each side of the play mat for the sections that fold up.

   

Sew strips of Velcro to the handle sections of the green play mat.

Cut out 2 pieces 6x7 inch and 2 pieces 6x6 inch in red felt for the outside walls. Cut out 2 pieces 4x6 inch and 2 pieces 2x6 inch in blue felt for the roof and handle. Cut out 1 piece 6x7 inch to reinforce the floor. Cut and iron on medium weight interfacing to the red wall, blue roof  and green floor pieces.

Cut out pieces of felt for the door, windows and apple tree (and any other embellishments you want) for the outside of the house, and glue in place.

Cut out 16 tabs of red felt (approx. 1inch x 2 inch) for the house closures. Sew Velcro circles to the tabs – the grippy, rough ones that stick to the felt.

 

I didn’t have any red thread and made a mess of sewing the Velcro on, so I cut out more red felt (1 inch square) to cover my sewing. This is optional!

   

Glue the tabs in position on the back of the green play mat, and then glue the red walls, blue roof and green floor pieces (all with interfacing) in position.

Cut out the hole of the handle using scissors or a craft knife. I also rounded off the tabs so they weren’t as bulky.

Fold it up into a house, fill with cars and take it somewhere fun  to play!

Unfold, get out the cars and start playing.

   

This play mat was inspired by the one at A Girl and a Glue Gun, the playhouse at Homemade By Jill and the take-along toy barn at Serving Pink Lemonade, as well as heaps of others I’ve seen in blog-land.

It’s a handy take-anywhere bag with plenty of space to carry cars and other toys. As an added bonus, it’s big enough to hold all my son’s cars, making a cute storage box in the playroom!

If you use this tutorial, please let me know in the comments or send me an email!