Grandma Camp Crafts

     Update*  After reading Wanda's post about font size, I decided to go back and improve the readability of this post.

  I am enjoying the week with my granddaughters while parents work.  Inspired by the book, Painting on Rocks for Kids by Lin Wellford, the first project my granddaughters worked on this week was painting rocks.  I brought a small collection of rocks that I picked up on my hunt and scrubbed clean.  They used outdoor acrylic paint. The book has an illustration of a town of rock houses which inspired the girls.  Here they are with their rocks.

      

      The oldest has some experience sewing on a machine and a little hand sewing.  The youngest ( 4 the end of this week) has said she wants to learn to sew like her big sister.  She has some practice with sewing cards so I planned a hand sewing project of applique.  I prepared simple animal shapes with fusible web and used a small punch purchased from Hobby Lobby. 

They used tapestry needles and 6 strands of embroidery floss and a running stitch to applique the shapes to hand towels. 

Mattie did a super job and finished 2 animals all by herself. 

    

Lily did a good job but with her short attention span only stitched half of her dog. 

      Another project was ornaments.  They used Paperclay, rolling pin and cookie cutters. With 2 days of thunderstorms and high humidity, their creations were slow to dry.  They finally got painted.   Mattie used a combination of cookie cutter and free-hand cutting.  

   

Lily used cookie cutters, however, she also formed one free-hand. 

    Next craft was hand puppets.  I used a 60% off coupon for a no-sew kit of sock puppets for the youngest.  If I had paid full price, I would have been disappointed.  The adhesive did not stick great and it was very hard to peel the paper backing off.  They did turn out cute.  Lily tried very hard to make them just like the picture on the box.

  I also picked up this free direction sheet from Jo-Ann Fabrics.

The oldest used the pattern for the turtle machine sewn hand puppet. The information says fleece; we used felt. There really were not many directions.
 Mattie chose her colors of felt, traced the pattern, and cut out the pieces.  She decided to add some satin stitching to embellish the turtle shell and drew the face.

     

At first the thick felt did not feed well on the sewing machine and she was disappointed with inconsistencies in the stitching.  It was also a challenge for her to stitch around the arms and head.  I am very proud of her work.

 I have had some time to sew myself but I will share that another day.

Enjoy some time sewing or quilting!