Chalkcloth and oilcloth are two things that I had never worked with before. I remember old vinyl placemats and the designs were nothing to write home about. However, thanks to designers like Anna Maria Horner and Momo, there are some really gorgeous prints being put out in oilcloth. They were perfect for this project. I first showed a small teaser at the end of the post here.
Aidan graciously allowed me to draw a picture on his placemat to try out all of the pretty chalk colors. He promptly ‘fixed’ it by coloring brown all over my stuff. Thanks.
I made chalkboard placemats for the boys and a few of their friends. I learned a LOT about my machine and tension when working with chalk and oilcloth. Seriously, figuring this out held me up much longer than I care to admit. Aside from that, this was a really fun and relatively quick project to ‘mass produce’ for gifts. I followed a tutorial and added a bit of extra bias tape tucked in the binding so that it could be easily tied once rolled up for travel. There’s a bit more chalkcloth (backed with oilcloth) at the end of the tie for the recipients name.
One of my husband’s complaint about all of our wooden toys is that he wanted some soft balls to throw. I agreed that this was an issue, so a few friends and I got together and experimented with wet felting and needle felting. I would say I’m pretty terrible at both, but wet felting a ball in a washing machine is probably the easiest craft ever. Ball up wool, put it in a bit of pantyhose to hold it together, and toss in the washer on hot (we put ours in a pillowcase to keep all the fibers from getting into the machine.) I made one with a large jingle bell inside and I needle felted some designs on the other. Neither are exactly what I had envisioned, but the boys enjoyed finding them in the toe of their christmas stockings. We play with them daily and my husband likes to bounce them off the walls and catch them. /sigh
