Page 20: Baseball glove/mitt

Items needed: Large square of brown felt (7" x 7"), 2 squares of white felt (3" x 3" each), red thread, black thread, 4 eyelets (brown), one small square of Velcro.

Teaches: imaginative play,

Alternate ideas: I have only boys (thus far), who love sports, so this page was very fitting for them. If you want to make a more girly theme, you could instead do an oven mitt and replace the baseball with a pie, tart or cupcake or something.

Cut out the following pieces: Cut out a baseball mitt/glove shape from the large piece of felt. (My mom gave me a bunch of sketches she made, way back in the 70's, while making her quiet book, and I scanned the baseball glove page sketch and will post it here. It might be helpful to enlarge the sketch picture and print it off and use it as a template when cutting your glove out.) Be sure to make the bottom of your glove big enough to be able to get your child's (and your!) hand in and out of it. My glove bottom is: 5" wide. Then, cut out 2 white circles from your white felt. My white circles are about 2.75" wide.

Directions: You are going to want to first top stitch with black thread on top of the baseball mitt the mitt seams/outlines. I did this on my sewing machine. Note: you are not sewing the mitt to the page yet! I first drew out the pattern of top stitching I wanted lightly on the felt with a pencil to give me some guidance. After you top stitch, you can add fun little eyelets (if you have them handy) as they add a nice "touch" to the bottom of the glove. I added 4 eyelets to mine.
Then you are going to want to sew the glove to the muslin page. I only sewed a stitch up the side edges of the glove and then across the top (not going down the fingers- it will make it too hard to slip hands/fingers in and out). If you look at the pic below closely, you can see where I have a double black stitch- one from top stitching, and one from sewing the glove to the page. Also, don't sew across the bottom or else there will be nowhere to slip the hand through!. Be sure to back stitch at the bottom (where the sides of the glove meet the page, since they will get tugged on lots during play.
Next you are going to want to sew the ball. To do this, first take one of the white circles and sew a piece of Velcro onto the back of it. Sew the other 1/2 of the Velcro to the muslin page above the glove (where the ball will be stationed when not in play mode). Once you've got your Velcro sewn on, you are going to want to sew the 2 white balls together (to make it double thick). I just sewed first around the edges in white thread. Then I trimmed the edges a wee bit so that the stitch lies at the ball's edges. Lastly, I loaded my machine with red thread, put it on the zig-zag function and adjust the stitch length so it is "fine" (will make the zig zag stitches really close together). Then I just sewed 2 red arches on the white ball so that it looks like a baseball. Another idea to make the red baseball stitches is to apply red ric-rac to the ball.

If you want to put a cute little text box on your page, just cut out a rectangle of muslin, write on it with sharpies the phrase you want (mine says "slip your hand into the baseball mitt", another idea is "take me out to the ball game" or "play ball!"), and sew that on too!

Stay tuned! Up next I will give the directions for my picnic basket/place setting page (see preview of it here)...