So yet again it’s been aged between posts. I haven’t been feeling enthusiastic about sewing, or blogging recently, but with the long weekend just finishing, I have got loads done and I hope to finally catch up on telling you about all the old things I’ve made! Speaking of old, today’s make was a Christmas present for my friend’s daughter. Yes Christmas. In April. Slightly in my defense, this was for Christmas 2 in January, but still it’s a while since I finished this! In totally unrelated news, I signed up to Photoshop, so hopefully my photos will improve slightly from now on – though I don’t know how to do many things so far!

So, back to the Travel Matching Game. It’s from the book Stitch Savvy by Deborah Moebes of Whip Stitch fame. I like to make presents for people, but this year (unlike last year), I only made this one – I think because last year was before I had discovered making my own clothes, so my sewing time was spent less selfishly – which cannot be said of the last 12 months! Last year for the same kid, I made the Norman the Slug with a Silly Shell wall hanging and this year I wanted to do even better, so when I saw the patter in Stitch Savvy, I couldn’t resist!

In the first instructions, she says to fussy cut some fabrics you have lying around into squares of 3 1/4″, in pairs, to form the remember remember pictures of the game. I didn’t have any such fabrics and I thought it would be nice to make the game a little educational too (the kid is almost 3, so was 2 1/2 at Christmas), so I made life hard for myself! I came up with numbers and fruits for my boards – I also made life difficult by making 2 boards instead of one. I thought about letters, but since you can have only 8 pairs, it would have been weird just to do the first 8 letters – it’s a bit weird to do the numbers from 1-8 and not 1-10, but c’est la vie – that was apparently a compromise I was willing to make!

Here are my amazing sketches of my ideas:

I planned which colours would go on the backgrounds and which colours the numbers would be, to add an extra dimension of learning.

I even made pattern pieces ( so I could make this again some day):

Time for a slightly embarrassing confession. Because I was making 2 different boards, I totally blanked on the fact that I had to cut out 2 of every number/ fruit and twice the number of backing pieces. So I cut out one of each number and one of each fruit and then realised what I had done and was very sad because it took aaages and I was only half done!

So the next thing I did (which is an extra step to the instructions in the book), was assemble all my squares:

This is how I laid them out to sew together, too. I sewed them together in rows, then I sewed the rows together – simple! Also, it was good that I had these photos to refer to when I jumbled up the pieces by mistake! You then back each board with your main fabric (in my case pink gingham) and insert some really stiff interfacing, so that the board has enough body for you to get it in and out of the frame. I used the thin cardboard from the insides of my Christmas wrapping paper as I had forgotten to get any interfacing, and I figured card would work just as well! It was a bit tricky getting it in because I left myself too little of a gap in one corner to turn the board, and insert the stiffening.

The next thing to make is the frame of windows that go over the board of shapes. This was a little fiddly and the instructions weren’t totally clear, I didn’t think. It was only by looking at the photos that I knew what I had to do. So you have your main fabric cut out in a square 15″ x 15″ (you actually have 3 squares of the main fabric cut to this size) – she says heavier weight fabrics are good, but I knew the kid’s favourite colour was pink, and what could be better than pink gingham?! You also have a square of backing fabric (in my case calico) cut out to the same size, and you sew squares 2 3/4 in, marking from the middle of the big square, and having gaps between the squares of 1/4 in either side of the centre mark – so there’s 1/2 in between each window. I hope this makes sense! You also need to sew all the way around the outside, leaving the same gap at the edge as between each internal window.

You can just about make out the stitching below.

So once you’ve sewn all the squares, you then cut out the windows, first cutting diagonally across the whole square up to each corner of stitching. Then you cut out the sides, leaving 1.4 in inside the stitching. The next bit was the bit I got confused about – you then cut in between the stitches for the windows on the backing fabric side – you kind of separate each window from its neighbour – you can just about see the cuts above, but it’s clearer below:

You need to snip the outside corners of each window as well as the inside ones – you can just about see below there are diagonal cuts both sides of the stitching:

You then flip the backing fabric behind the main fabric to make the window look all neat – this is very nearly impossible to explain, but makes sense when you have the thing in front of you! A small word of advice, though – all the edges of the backing fabric that you have just cut will be exposed on the back of the frame, so if you want it to look neat and not fray to shit (like calico does), you might want to zigzag or neaten the edges before you flip all the windows through –  didn’t have time to do this because I left it a bit late to do all this sewing!

So this is what the windows look like when flipped through:

You top stitch each window once you’ve flipped it. And there are 16 of them!  The other 2 pieces of fabric that you had cut out at 15″ x 15″ are sewn together, leaving a gap to turn it through, and stiffened with the same thing as the boards. The you top stitch the window piece onto the backing piece. The other time consuming thing is to make all the covers for the windows – 16 at 4″ x 4″, which are sewn right sides together with a gap for turning them through, then each one is top stitched, which catches in the gap. Then all that’s left to do is sew on poppers to each little square and to the top of each window.

And here it is in action – she’s just about the right age to play a remember remember type game and she knows the numbers and the fruits, so it’s a pretty good present! I’ve already got a request for one from my sister for my nephew – but since he’s only coming up to his first birthday, I think he’s still a bit little for it!