Felt garland

by Sara Our play room is full of toys, its bright, and I've been itching to add some 'flair' since we moved in.  We have fantastic wall decals and a few of the kids works of art on display but I've been waiting to find something colourful to add to the walls.  At a maternity photography session at the end of December I noticed a beautiful felt circle garland hanging on my client's walls and decided to replicate it.

I bought felt on sale at Michael's for less than $10.  I used craft foam to make circle templates for the felt: I traced three different size glasses from the cupboard and then used the templates to cut out the circles of felt.

My 2.5 year old monkey had no interest in the activity so its been a special project for the 4.5 year old firefighter and I to work on.  He chose the colours of felt to use and would then collect them and stack them as I cut them out.   On Sunday morning we were up with the birds and set to work finishing our project.

After cutting out all the circles we sorted them by colour and then the firefighter made patterns of circles on the floor.  He learned all about size and colour patterns in kindergarten this fall and had fun choosing what patterns he was going to make with the circles.   We made rainbow patterns, big-medium-small patterns, patterns with our favourite colours, and when we were about 3/4 of the way through the circles the firefighter decided to make one huge pattern that looked like the wheels on a big rig truck.

I used white thread and did one simple running stitch at the top of each felt circle and then slid them down the thread.  Because of the weight I ended up making two separate garlands for the playroom walls.  I used white push pins to attach them to the playroom walls and we managed to wrap the garland halfway around our play room!

Depending on your children's ages they could be more or less involved in the project.  Older children could cut out the felt shapes themselves and they certainly don't need to be circles: you could use any shape or even combine different shapes.  There are endless colours of felt available that you could use to colour coordinate with the room you want to decorate.  You could even layer the felt (smaller shape on top of a larger shape) for a two dimensional pattern.  Dark thread would look great on light walls (and vice versa) and its a great opportunity to introduce sewing to your kids (a simple running stitch is all that's needed to link all the circles together).

How have you decorated your play room?

Sara is a photographer and mom to a 4.5-year-old ” firefighter” and 2.5-year-old “monkey”.  You can also find her at her blog, My Points of View.