for my birthday this year, my mom sent me both the pattern and the felt kit to make this fantastic set of “three little pigs” finger puppets.

i’m not usually into kits, but this one is sooooooooooooo cute (i actually love pretty much all of this shop‘s patterns.  check them out, aren’t they just so much fun?!) and the thought of not having to track down all those different colors of wool felt seemed luxurious.  and so, as soon as i was done with my grad class and had some homework-free time, i treated myself to a sewing session and made the whole set.  these will get tons of use from me at work because i recently discovered a fun, simple little song about the three pigs in spanish (done by ana lomba on her “hop, skip and sing spanish” recording.  i can’t find a link to even a sample of it online, so you’ll just have to take my word for it.) that is so catchy that the kids at the happy toddler’s daycare sing it to me whenever i drop him off (i do a spanish storytime for them twice a month and this is a favorite!).

the pattern and kit are really well done and if you have any interest in making a set of these for yourself, i’d highly recommend them.  there was enough felt in the kit to make one full size set and plenty of a few of the colors leftover to make some extra projects. and so… i was inspired to create a busy book page about these little pigs (y uuuuuuuuun lobo!).  here’s what i did to modify the pattern for my book page.

1.  reduced the pigs by 50%.  i wanted them to actually fit into their houses (and fit on llittle kid fingers), and i still needed to fit three houses on a two-page spread so… the pigs got shrunk.

2.  simplified the pattern.  the original pig pattern has a separate piece for each of the ears, each of the arms, an oval for the nose, and a contrasting inner ear piece.  building each pig this way allows for greater individuality and expression, but the pieces are already tiny and reducing them in half would have meant sewing with tweezers and/or a lot of frustration.  instead, for my pattern i cut out one ear and one arm and taped them onto the basic pig body pattern (ear on the left side, arm on the right).  for each pig, i cut out two of these shapes from felt, then flipped one over so that both ears and both arms were visible.  i sewed the pig nose on, then sewed the two pig-shapes together.  oh, and i also eliminated the clothing detail for the tiny pigs.  for the wolf, i taped both ears onto the body pattern (since he’s not symmetrical, i can’t flip him the same way) and used paint to add his nose and eyes.

3.  eliminated the stitched accents (nostrils, eyebrows, and those dang french knot eyes) and instead used a fine point permanent black pen.  *tip:  use the marker (or paint!) after you’ve finished sewing or your sewing machine foot will smear ink all over your pig.*

4.  the houses are only sewn on one side so that they open up like a book and you can put pigs into the houses more easily.

5.  added blue sky and green rolling hills for the houses to be built upon and attached everything to the page with long* grosgrain ribbons (except for the brick house which i sewed on to the page since it doesn’t get blown away by the wolf.  i also made that house a bit bigger to accommodate all three pigs.)  the hills then became pockets that all the be-ribboned pieces can be tucked into when playtime is done.

*ok, if you want to get really specific, the straw and wooden houses are on short ribbons that are just long enough to let the house get tucked over the top of the hill when the ribbon is fully extended.  that makes the houses a bit more stable.

note:  if you compare the brick house in the original pattern to the one on this page, you will also see that i did one not-shortcut detail on this page.  as the daughter of a home-repair expert, i couldn’t stand to see those bricks all stacked up on top of each other (that’s so unstable!) so i played around with alternating the bricks in a more traditional pattern.  although it didn’t take thaaaaaat much longer, i think i might eliminate all of the house detail for the next iteration of the page and just let the colors speak for themselves.

although i can’t offer this page pattern to you for free (i don’t own the copyright!), let me know if you really feel you need a pattern for the hills and i’ll put something together.  :)  and remember how i said the felt kit came with extra?  so far, i’ve had enough of the pink to make one full size and two half-size sets of the three pigs and i think i have enough to make one more full set of the half-size pigs.  this pattern could also make a cute “this little piggy” set!

let’s start this sew-along off with an original design and free pattern, shall we? i first saw the idea for a marble maze here and thought it was brilliant.  i couldn’t wait to try it out and as soon as i had a few moments to myself in the sewing room, i put together three felt mazes, experimenting with different maze patterns and shapes.  excitedly, i showed them to the happy toddler when he woke up and he … didn’t get it.  (“take-a out, mama!  take-a out!”)  he wanted to play with the marble and did not understand the subtleties of pushing this invisible marble around inside a felt pouch.  so, first modification–make the marble visible.  i considered plastic, but thought it might stick to the marble too much and make it hard to push through the maze, so instead i dug through my stash for some sheer fabric.  one of the shapes i’d experimented with had been a circle and i liked the way it turned out, so i played around with that shape and it began looking like a snail and thus this pattern idea was born.  here are the instructions to make this page:

you will need:

the pattern

9×9 blue felt

9×12 background felt (will also be the color of the snail’s shell)

scraps of green and brown felt (for snail and “grass”)

8x8ish sheer fabric (you might want to trace the circle and stitchlines from the pattern onto the sheer fabric before you begin, but then you’ll have to more carefully match up the circle on the sheer fabric and the circle on the blue felt .)

a marble

how to make this page:

1.  draw the circle on your blue fabric with a washable pen (oops!  i forgot to wash mine out in the photo above!) or a sliver of soap.  the circle should be towards the top left corner, with plenty of margin so you don’t have to worry about the security of the stitching once the page is complete.  stack the blue felt on top of your sheer fabric and background felt in the order shown in the photo.  you might want to consider cutting your 9×9 and 9×12 pieces of felt slightly larger and then trimming them back down to size after your whole page is constructed.  the felt tends to shift a bit during sewing.

2.  sew the circle and sew around the entire perimeter of the 9×9 square leaving a gap to push your marble through (between the sheer fabric and the background felt!), then sewing up the gap after the marble is inside.

3.  sew on your brown snail pieces.

4.  measure the distance between the bottom edge of your snail and the bottom of the 9×9 sheet.  cut a strip of green that is that tall by 9″ wide.  piece two pieces together if you need to.  sew that strip across the bottom of the page (or just let your snail float and leave this step off).

5.  very carefully, make a slit through your blue felt that does not go through the sheer fabric.  once you’ve made that slit, slide a pair of sharp scissors in and cut close to your stitchline all the way around the circle.  this is the most nerve-wracking step, but if you go slowly you’ll be fine.  if you’re really concerned about accidentally slicing the sheer fabric, do this step before sewing on the snail or the grass so that if you mess up, it’s easier to rip out and try again.

6.  for very young quiet book recipients, you can stop sewing at this point.  just moving the marble under the sheer fabric will be an interesting tactile experience and the marble will move more easily than it will once a “maze” has been sewn in.

7.  if you’ve already traced the stitchlines from the pattern, great!  sew them in, making sure to backstitch both ends of the open circles.  if you haven’t traced the lines, you can either a) eyeball it, b) find circular objects that are close in size to the circles on the pattern (the inner circle is a large thread spool) or c) use a sewing machine attachment that will indicate up to 1.5″ away.  be sure to check that your marble will fit through that size channel.  i’m not certain what size my marble is (normal to smallish?) but it could squeeze through a 1″ channel, and slide fairly easily through 1.25″ or 1.5″ channels.

8.  trim loose threads and play with the maze to make sure your marble moves freely through the entire thing.

and that’s it!  i hope you’ve enjoyed my tutorial.  if you make a snail marble maze, i’d love to see your pictures in the flickr group!