Sewing Practice : Hair clips and bird feeders

R has started to really get into sewing.  This is a good thing but I am too often unavailable to help due to the boys.  These are some projects that we have managed to do together recently though.

First felt hair clips (barrettes?)- just some of the designs we have made.

These are dead easy to make.  First take your hair clip and place it on top of the felt you intend to use.  Cut a rectangle that is slightly larger than the clip.  Cut another that is the same size, you should now have one piece for the front and one for the back.  Take the front piece and decorate with cut out pieces of felt, beads, sequins, embroidery stitches, buttons, in fact anything you fancy.  The only thing that dictated what I used was that it had to be SEWN onto the piece of felt so that it would stand up to being worn more than once.  Take the piece of felt for the back and using the clip as a guide cut a slit in the felt for the back of the clip to slip through (using felt means that this won't fray).  Feed the "arm" of the clip through the slot and fasten as normal to hold it in place.  Match up the the front and back pieces so the edges match, the decoration should be on the top and the front of the original hairclip inside the "felt sandwich".  Sew the front and back together using a blanket stitch or running stitch.  Done!

The other needle and thread practice we have been doing is threading monkey nuts onto thread using a needle.  We also made a popcorn one (which was much easier, unroasted monkey nut shells are harder than I thought) but since it is also B's favourite snack it turned into a B feeder rather than a bird feeder!  Here is the feeder as hung on the tree and photographed by R.