30 Minute Fabric and Felt Nesting Eggs Tutorial

Who doesn't love simple, fast, and cute projects. Today's post is about a nice sewing project perfect to give away to little ones. The best part: it just takes less than 30 minutes and a couple of fabric scraps. Recently I stumbled upon these adorable nesting eggs on Toddler Approved blog and could not resist the temptation to make a set.  Since these are for my Little Soi, I decided going girly on the eggs fabric choice. I’m so pleased with the end result and excited on seeing how little one liked the new nesting set.

Want to take a look at the easy steps to create the cute set? Although I followed Toddler Approved's tutorial I tweaked instructions a little. My set consist of four nesting eggs.

Materials:

• Fabric - I selected four different cotton prints from my stash. Scraps are ideal for these.
• Felt - I used what I got on hand..in this case I used 3 different colors.
• Fusible Interfacing - Pellon to provide structure to the cotton side of the eggs.
• Sewing tools - machine, thread, scissors....

1. First gather all your materials:

2. Now draw the biggest egg shape (or whatever shape you wish) on a piece of felt and cut it out. In my case I happened to have a decorative tin can in an oval shape that was the perfect reference to cut my second nesting egg. To make the biggest egg I just cut a piece of felt about 1" larger than the lid.

Eggs approx. measurement are as follow:

Bigger Egg: 6 1/2 x 4 1/2 inches

Second Egg: 5 x 3 1/2 inches

Third Egg: 3 1/2 x 2 1/4 inches

Smallest Egg: 2 1/4 x 1 1/2 inches

3. Use felt oval shapes to cut out a piece of Pellon for each one of the eggs.

4. If using multiple fabric prints as I did, decide which print is going to be which egg and place Pellon on back of a piece of fabric that is a little bigger than the Pellon piece.

5. Turn fabric right side up and adhere the Pellon with hot iron (follow manufacturer's instructions).

6. Cut out excess fabric.

7. Repeat with remaining pieces. Now you have the four felt oval shapes and the four fabric shapes with interfacing.

8. Pin matching felt and fabric ovals, wrong sides together.

9. Sew all around the closest to the edge as possible making sure to caught both pieces. I did sew three times all around to ensure it will handle lots of play. (Sorry, stitch is not visible in the photo)

10. Cut a straight line (or cracked as in original tutorial) in the middle of the eggs on the felt side of the egg. Make sure not to caught the fabric from the other side. I did for the three biggest eggs, and did not cut the smallest one.

11. You did it!! A cute set of fabric and felt eggs. Cheap, fast, simple, cute!!!

Little Soi is certainly over the learning the shapes already, but I just expect these to reinforce sizes notions (small, smaller, smallest; big, bigger, biggest) and moreover, feed my little’s endless curiosity (at least for a while).

Aren’t these adorable? What other shapes would you suggest to add the fabric nesting collection? Have you tried making these? Share your photos and link back to us.

Get Mail Organized - Hanging Fabric Basket Storage

About two weeks ago I was in the exercise of reviewing my goals list (is just I don't want to call it the New Year's Resolutions, in case I get to year end with more unfinished goals than expected!)... One of the priorities and therefore with a goal set to first quarter 2012 was completing my craft studio/office organization and decoration. I know, I know all this sound so calculated, but, hey.... you can not just flip the switch because no longer working on the corporate world.

Anyway... I noticed that one of the main objectives was to figure out an effective, cute way to handle our mail. It happens to end on every corner of the house...and cars. This was becoming a little problem as we needed a way to keep track of what needed action without having to look around the house for two days for an almost forgotten incoming mail.

I search the web and found this great tutorial on hanging fabric baskets on The Mother Huddle and knew I had to try it for something... In this case it resulted the perfect solution for our incoming mail spot problem.

These wall hanging fabric baskets are so cute and easy to complete. The fabric baskets are a great solution to any messy problem.

I made two hanging baskets, one for holding all incoming mail, and the other to hold all mail that requires any action (i.e. make a call, make a payment, etc). I hung them from a tension rod that was laying around the house with no use and decided to hung them at the bottom of my studio window (that is desperately screaming for a window treatment...but, that is another project). They happened to hang just above the desk surface, which is great as it allows me to use the counter surface and clean with no clutter on top.

As for labeling each basket, I grabbed two old pins (from my drawer full of "I don't know what, when, or where but these are gonna be handy someday Stuff") glued a yellow foamy circle to it. Then glued a light blue cardboard circle on top of the yellow circle. Finally, I just wrote "Mail" and "Action Required" on the light blue circles with a black marker and pinned one label on each basket. Tadda! Problem solved! Check it out the first set I made... aren't this pretty.

As for now these work great, I might add a couple more to sort "To be Filed" documents and "Receipts" in a future. One step closser...now I go back to check that To Do Goals List and see what else needs some handy crafty inspiration.