Tuesday 18 February 2014

Old-Fashioned Games #2

I have mentioned before that I was working on some simple, old-fashioned games to fill the village green at the Carlisle Country Craft and Old-Fashioned Market Mercantile in August.  Here is game #2 if you are looking for a fun little activity with kids.
Who doesn't love hopscotch?  For this one, I used a piece of a table cloth that I picked up at the Goodwill, and some leftover seam binding.  I used different colours for each of the sections because I want it to have a kind of patchwork look to it (the time span we are going for at the show is about mid 1800s to 1910).  Plus, I didn't have very much of each of the colours.  My squares are 11", mostly because my tablecloth was only 78" long...I would go with 12-13" if I had an unlimited amount of space.
I made the numbers from seam binding as well, and just sewed them on.  At first I was trying regular numbers, but it was rather difficult to make the 2 and 3, so I switched to the straight lines of roman numerals.
The "stones" are small bean bags made of old children's shirts.  I may or may not add a coloured stripe or circle to the ones that are the same colour.  I haven't decided yet.  They are 3" squares, with 1/3 cup of beans inside.
Note: if you are playing this game indoors, I would stop here.  It won't slip on carpet, and for wood floors, you could just lay it out on those anti-slip mats.
Mine, however, is for outdoors - and it has to last a whole weekend.  I lined the back with a sturdy piece of fabric (that happened to be a futon cover in a previous life).  I sewed it together front to front and then turned it right side out and sewed around the edges a second time.  It should be pretty tough.
Once the front and backing were sewn together, I edged all  around the squares a second time.  It gives it a quilted look while making it less likely to slip around when a child jumps on it.  I plan on adding grommet holes to the corners, and quite probably the long sides as well, so that we can anchor the game down with tent pegs.

In case you are curious, this went together in an afternoon.

Linking up with: Keep Calm Craft On at Frontier Dreams
                         Hand & Homemade Mondays at On The Old Path
                         The Backyard Farming Connection
                         Fiber Arts Friday at Wisdom Begins in Wonder
                         Creative Friday at Natural Suburbia

1 comment:

  1. What a great project for the kids to play with and for sneaking sewing skills in too. Love it. All of the sewing posts this week have me thinking I'm neglecting my sewing machine.

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