{"id":2115,"date":"2012-05-14T23:07:55","date_gmt":"2012-05-15T04:07:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thisishappystuff.com\/?p=2115"},"modified":"2012-05-14T23:07:55","modified_gmt":"2012-05-15T04:07:55","slug":"quiet-book-snail-marble-maze-page","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thisishappystuff.com\/?p=2115","title":{"rendered":"quiet book: snail marble maze page"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>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<\/a> and thought it was brilliant.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 excitedly, i showed them to the happy toddler when he woke up and he … didn’t get it.\u00c2\u00a0 (“take-a out, mama!\u00c2\u00a0 take-a out!”)\u00c2\u00a0 he wanted to play with the marble and did not understand the subtleties of pushing this invisible marble around inside a felt pouch.\u00c2\u00a0 so, first modification–make the marble visible.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 here are the instructions to make this page:<\/p>\n

you will need:<\/p>\n

the pattern<\/a><\/p>\n

9×9 blue felt<\/p>\n

9×12 background felt (will also be the color of the snail’s shell)<\/p>\n

scraps of green and brown felt (for snail and “grass”)<\/p>\n

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 .)<\/p>\n

a marble<\/p>\n

how to make this page:<\/p>\n

1.\u00c2\u00a0 draw the circle on your blue fabric with a washable pen (oops!\u00c2\u00a0 i forgot to wash mine out in the photo above!) or a sliver of soap.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 stack the blue felt on top of your sheer fabric and background felt in the order shown in the photo.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 the felt tends to shift a bit during sewing.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>2.\u00c2\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>3.\u00c2\u00a0 sew on your brown snail pieces.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>4.\u00c2\u00a0 measure the distance between the bottom edge of your snail and the bottom of the 9×9 sheet.\u00c2\u00a0 cut a strip of green that is that tall by 9″ wide.\u00c2\u00a0 piece two pieces together if you need to.\u00c2\u00a0 sew that strip across the bottom of the page (or just let your snail float and leave this step off).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>5.\u00c2\u00a0 very carefully, make a slit through your blue felt that does not<\/em> go through the sheer fabric.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 this is the most nerve-wracking step, but if you go slowly you’ll be fine.\u00c2\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>6.\u00c2\u00a0 for very young quiet book recipients, you can stop sewing at this point.\u00c2\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>7.\u00c2\u00a0 if you’ve already traced the stitchlines from the pattern, great!\u00c2\u00a0 sew them in, making sure to backstitch both ends of the open circles.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 be sure to check that your marble will fit through that size channel.\u00c2\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

\"\"8.\u00c2\u00a0 trim loose threads and play with the maze to make sure your marble moves freely through the entire thing.<\/p>\n

  marble maze<\/a><\/p>\n

and that’s it!\u00c2\u00a0 i hope you’ve enjoyed my tutorial.\u00c2\u00a0 if you make a snail marble maze, i’d love to see your pictures in the flickr group<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.\u00c2\u00a0 i couldn’t wait to try it out and as soon as … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,15,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-busy-book","category-crafty-stuff","category-kid-stuff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisishappystuff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisishappystuff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisishappystuff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisishappystuff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisishappystuff.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2115"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisishappystuff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2130,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisishappystuff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2115\/revisions\/2130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisishappystuff.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisishappystuff.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisishappystuff.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}