Lori and I debated on birthday gifts for Mur-Man. Last year I got him an Elf on the Shelf (Stan) for a birthday/Christmas gift. This year I wanted it to be a toy, and I wanted it to be homemade. Naturally, we turned to Pinterest and Lori found a ton of ideas – one of which was a felt tool belt with felt tools. Perfect!
I had all the required items:
Multiple colors of felt
Thread/embroidery floss
Puffy paint
Craft/fabric glue such as Fabri-Tac (my favorite)
Sewing machine*
*Sewing machine not required since these could be hand-stitched, but I went for easy and quick – squeezing crafts into weekends is a lot of work with the monsters running around with endless energy; like I always say, we wouldn’t need foreign oil or offshore drilling if only we could tap KD and Easy Mac’s energy.
First I selected a tan piece of 8½” by 11” felt. I figured that resembled the color of a leather tool belt. On one long side I cut circular scoops out of the corners on one of the long sides of the felt rectangle. The remaining center piece had to be big enough once folded down that a 1” piece of belting or ribbon could slide through it. Stitch the folded edge to make the belt loop.
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| I did a simple straight stitch around the edges of these pieces (1/4" seam) so it will keep its shape - felt can stretch out with use |
With another piece of tan felt, I cut an approximately 5” by 11” rectangle and sewed that to the front of the first piece on the bottom end of the original rectangle. Then I sewed lines down to make the length-wise pockets for each tool.
The next step required some input from Shaun since I am not a tool-wielding kind of gal – that’s what my manly hubby is for! I had him sketch tools out onto various colors of felt. A couple of wrenches, a screwdriver and the hammerhead were made out of gray felt. I cut two pieces of each, sewed them together (I stuffed them with fiber-fill before closing the pieces entirely).
I made the handle for the hammer out of black felt that I glued onto a pencil. I stuck the hammerhead onto the pencil handle and glued them really well – I covered the seam with a piece of red felt glued on.
I made a handle for the screwdriver by wrapping a broken crayon with some fiber-fill and red felt.
Finally, I made a ruler out of ivory felt – again double-sided so it would have some heft to it and not be too floppy. I sewed the inch tick-marks on there and puffy painted the numbers.
You could make about any tools you want to, these were just the suggestions from the hubby.
To make it cute, I cut out ‘M’ ‘P’ and ‘L’ from felt because those are Mur-Man’s initials, and turned it into a construction company (using black puffy paint). And I couldn’t help but make an Angry Bird logo since that was the theme for his 2nd birthday party. It turned out SOOOOO cute.
For the belt, I found some red belting material. When I got to Lori’s little city, ND, for the party, we measured Murray’s waist and sewed on a few pieces of Velcro so it would stay on his waist.
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| KD and Easy Mac picked out Mur-Man's birthday outfit |
DONE! Super cute! And no cost to me! Now Mur-Man can help Steve with every home improvement project. J
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