February 8, 2011

Felt Card Table PLAYHOUSE!

I know I already posted once tonight, but I am just so excited to finally have this project finished so that I can post pictures of it on here! I literally finished it just 30 minutes ago. It has taken me so so long. I can prove it. The first time I posted about this project was almost a year ago. I heard about these felt playhouses from my friend Natalie and started looking them up online. It's a card table cover that's made entirely of felt sewn together. The nice thing about it is that you can take it off and fold up the cover and card table to be stored when it's not being used. I found these on Etsy and fell in love with them. So before you're too impressed, click on that link and notice that I basically ripped off their idea! Here's mine:


This was a very very time-consuming and difficult project, especially for this amateur seamstress. When I started it I thought, "What a great gift this would be! I'll make some for my friends that have kids when I'm done with mine." But let me be clear that I will NEVER make another one of these again unless someone offered to pay me a million dollars. Ha! And if someone did offer me that, I'd feel obligated to tell them that they could buy one on Etsy (with prettier stitching, I'm sure) for about $200. I'm so glad I made this one, though, because I learned so much about sewing through the process. I got really comfortable with my sewing machine and now feel that I could take on any sewing project (not that I plan on taking on any more projects of this size any time soon).

When I began working on it (last year, haha), I was adamant that I do it all by myself and not let anyone help me. I wouldn't even use any patterns. I just wanted to look at them online and try to copy them and add my own personal touches. This made it a lot harder, but made me think out of the box and problem solve as far as sewing goes. Then I got really bored with it and put it up in a closet for, oh, 5 months. I finally pulled it out again a few days ago when we had FOUR snow days in a row (woohoo!) and was determined to finish it. I knew that once the twins were born, I'd never have time to finish it, so I decided to knock it all out before I got too big and pregnant to be crawling around on the floor cutting, pinning, and sewing. And I did get all the sides done by myself! Here are some pictures of the work in progress:


After I got the sides and all the embellishments done, I kind of freaked out. I swallowed my pride and had my wonderful momma (who is a much more experienced seamstress than I am) come help me figure out how to sew all the sides together and attach the white "roof" with scalloped shingles. After a little pinning, sewing, seam ripping, re-pinning, and re-sewing, we finally got it finished! Here are all the detailed pictures of the final product. I hope Laney loves it! It features our two cats, Jack & Penny, a fruit tree with removable velcro fruit, and a little mailbox with 3 pieces of mail. Also, the number on the house is our actual address number, so hopefully it will help her memorize it. :) Sorry for all the pictures that are probably taking forever to load. I'm just pretty stinking excited to have this done and want you to see all angles of it!





Yes, our cat really did walk in there and look out the window on her own hahaha.






2 comments:

Taryn Bolin said...

Melanie!

I'm so impressed with you! I'm so happy for your beautiful family. That playhouse is absolutely amazing.

Jenn said...

This looks amazing. I am going to attempt to make one for my little boy for a birthday. I figure that it will take me several months of work to get what I want. Like you i don't want to use patterns but simply to look at what others have done and go from there. I have to say your house looks amazing! A billlion times better than the majority of ones that I have been looking at! I am not the best at sewing but I figure I have the creativity and drive to make it. how bad can it really look right??

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