Magnetic Felt Food - 'Peelable' Cantaloupe Slice - Pattern!!

Ha! Here is my stroke of felt food genius - a piece of cantaloupe with rind that can be sliced off. The peel is held to the fruit by magnets that are completely concealed. I use the tiny but super strong neodymium ones. They are also lightweight. (Okay, in all honesty, it was Mr. Field Notes who suggested a fruit slice with removable peel. He's smart, too. It's just that usually he takes my good ideas and makes them even better, not the other way around. But the funky crust and cantaloupe part was all mine, neener neener. (We're not competitive with each other at all, the Mr. and I......)). Yeah, so enough about us — onto the cantaloupe.

So, this project is one you can do yourself - choosing either the easy route (not peelable, no magnets) or the harder one. I've included a pattern down at the end.

Supplies:
6 magnets
felt in the following colors: light orange, lime/neon green, tan
thread: brown, tan and orange/yellow

It really helps if you can use a sewing machine to make the criss-cross brown stitches for the outer peel. It would be a big pain to hand embroider, but could be done. I get the felt in 8x11 inch sheets for 20 cents each at my local JoAnn's. I found really small, thin neodymium magnets for sale on etsy and used those for this project.

You can click on the pattern below and save it to print out and use to cut your own felt pieces. If you don't want to make a hidden magnet one that peels, you won't need the wider strip in orange, just the one in tan and the narrower one in orange. You can also use velcro instead of magnets.

I hid the magnets completely by sewing them in place between two pieces of felt, cut slightly narrower than the outer layers they hid behind. Basically, I sewed a little basket/nest of thread around them to hold them in place - at the top, middle, and bottom of the peel and the bottom of the fruit slice.

The hardest part is making sure the three magnets in the peel meet up just right with the three in the fruit. Even when they are oriented to attract each other, if they are a smidge out of alignment, they won't hold the peel and fruit together neatly. I used the force of the magnets to guide me.

I made an interior panel to hide the magnets in the peel by sewing three magnets inside little nests of thread in three places (top, middle and bottom) between two pieces of felt that I cut slightly narrower than the outer pieces of the peel that you actually see (the green and tan). Then I sewed this in between the green and tan piece. Next I made the interior panel for the magnets that are hidden in the fruit. I laid one of the interior orange strips for the fruit on top of the lime green side of the finished peel. I laid a magnet on top of that close to wherever the magnet was in the peel. If you get close, it will just slide into place, attracted by the magnetic force. Then I put the other interior piece of orange on top of it and picked up the magnet with the two pieces of orange felt around it and then fixed the magnet into place by sewing a network of thread all around it. I repeated this for the other two magnets in the peel.

I've admired a lot of felt food for sale on etsy and have never seen anything like this before, so I think I have something unique here. There are loads of other possibilities with this general style and technique, too. Watermelons, oranges, apples — just about any peelable fruit. Cool! And, more fun for a little one =D

Felt Food: Meat & Other random stuff

I made some more felt food! It's slow going on account of nearly always having a baby in my lap but I think these turned out pretty well.

A bowl of udon noodles, braised tofu and carrots:

A steak, tuna rolls and slices of mikon:

A fillet of salmon, cinnamon roll, deviled eggs, fruit slices and crackers:

Bacon and a T-bone steak:
The bacon has wire in it so it can be bent and stay that way. The steak has a cooked and un-cooked side so it can be flipped and 'cooked.' She has an amazing collection of felt food now — it fills 9 shoebox sized containers!

Further Forays into Felt Food: Squid Dinner plus Veggies

I know, I know, it's poor form to ape other artists, but I had to try to make the squid I saw in my favorite felt food artist's shop on etsy. I am not selling it, so it's okay to plagiarize, right? Actually, most of the art I have ever made in my life is totally copied (sh! our little secret). I think most art at some level is.

The veggies are really easy to make yourself:
Green beans - piece of cake to make - just cut some green rectangles, roll tightly and stitch shut.
Cooked carrot slices - also easy - cut two quarter sized orange pieces and a long strand. Stitch the strand to one round doodad then most of the other. Leave a centimeter unstitched as an opening to put fiberfill inside, then stitch closed.
Green onion stalk - cut two of the cream pieces and two long green pieces about 1.5 centimeters wide and 10 inches long. Fold the stalks in half, pin, and machine stitch closed down the middle. Then stitch the bulb around the edges leaving space at the top to push the green stalks into the pocket and hand stitch closed.


The garlic bread and squid take a bit of fenagling but are relatively easy to make. It just takes a bunch of time to stitch the squid legs and the french knots used to make the pepper for the bread can be tedious. Two of the ten squid tentacles have little cups at the ends that were fun to make, and surprisingly easy to pull off. But, the squid 'legs' are enough of a pain that I would make them another way if I had to make another squid. One can always just buy one from GoBuggy on etsy, if she's got them in stock! Her store is very popular, for good reason. I think she's got the best Japanese felt food on etsy. But curiously enough, she hasn't done sushi. Hmmm. I'm eager to try that myself, in fact.

Kiwi Fruit: Making felt fruits makes you crave them!

On a previous post I mentioned that I thought having kids play with healthy felt food would encourage them to adopt healthy eating habits. I haven't seen whether that's true (yet) but I did find that making felt kiwis definitely made me crave them!

During grad school I made a fruit smoothie a day (just about), sometimes with yogurt and sometimes with banana and orange juice as the base. One of my favorites was a combo of orange juice, kiwi, strawberry and whatever other fruits seemed good at the time: blackberries, papaya, mango. They were so yummy. I really have no idea why I stopped. But I think it would be good to try one; I just think it would totally aggravate my pregnancy-induced heartburn. Still, kiwis are so good for you — high in vitamin C and potassium, plus fiber (which is also good for pregnancy). And, they are super refreshing during the summer heat.

I think I may send Mr. Field Notes out on a run to buy kiwis... but he's already scheduled to give Big Katy a bath this afternoon. I would scrub her myself, but I can't bend over any more and the thought of simultaneously bending over, shampooing her hugeness and keeping her in the bath tub is just too much. I can't even begin to think about how much of a royal pain in the keester she'd be to dry off. That's why Mr. Field Notes picked up that assignment. He he. Pregnancy has its perks.

And really, the thought of heartburn from that kiwi smoothie makes me just want to have a McFlurry instead. Would you believe that both the M&M and Butterfinger ones are loaded with heartburn medication? I didn't either until I started eating them..

I can always start eating kiwis again, let's see, around July 28 or so!

Besides the felt kiwis, I also finished making a felt sub bun, tomato halves, onion slices and two pieces of ham for it. Some of the goodies for the sandwich I made previously can be used on the sub, which means more versatility for making sammies. Next up: Green beans.

My Foray into Felt Food

Over the last few days I've been making a sandwich out of felt — using no patterns, just winging it.


The sandwich has:

* 2 slices of bread, with crust
* swiss cheese slice
* 3 slices of thin cut deli turkey meat
* 2 pickles
* 2 tomatoes
* slice of ham/bologna
* an egg with yolk
* cheddar cheese slice
* 10 leaves of lettuce


After making it, I came to realize that people who sell felt food on etsy severely underprice their creations. I've seen sandwiches, albeit not as complete as this one, for sale for as little as $11! That's crazy. It took me at least an hour alone to sew just the bread and cheese. And, it's not like I'm a novice hand-stitcher either — I've been sewing since my grandmother taught me when I was 11. And I have gotten plenty of practice making all those stinking OrnaMonkeys! There is definitely an upper limit on how fast you can stich by hand, so to see people so severely underprice their work it makes me wonder.

Of course, some of you may be wondering why the heck you'd make felt food, let alone buy it in the first place. Well... if you've got kids or are expecting them, they do make super cool toys. Kids can assemble their own sandwich, picking and choosing what they want to put on it to pretend to eat (or to pretend to make their dolls eat). This let's them practice at making their own food long before it's safe to. And, there's no mess. Depending on the type of felt play food they have to play with, they may even be more adventurous with eating the real deal. Play with fake asparagus enough times, or sushi, or pita sandwiches, and maybe just maybe she'll ask to eat that instead of a whole litany of other things that wouldn't be as healthy.

Baby Field Notes will have a well stocked felt food pantry by the time she's old enough to make believe. I can't wait! I've already bought some super awesome felt food from GoBuggy on etsy. Her creations are amazing — so much so that I now know it's not worth it to even try. I did try to make a lobster like her crawfish. It has joined the domain of Projects I Started And Never Finished. What was I thinking?! You can see her talent on display here in this crawfish dinner.