How to Make a Felt Board

So, earlier this week, I felt a tad bit crafty, and wanted to do something that I could mostly complete in a day (around naps, long lunches and longer milk feeds). I decided to pull out something I’d been planning for a little while and hadn’t done anything about – a felt board.

While Squirm is too young to manipulate the pieces himself, I thought a felt board could be another source of visual literacy, especially if I started with the nursery rhymes we’ve been enjoying every day. Before I could start cutting out felt pieces, though, I needed to make the board itself:

Materials

• Canvas (we used a fairly large one from a discount shop)
• Large piece of felt big enough to cover the canvas and wrap over the sides (Spotlight sells felt on the roll – we chose blue because it can be sky or sea)
• Scissors
• Hot glue gun

Method

1. Lay the felt down on a flat surface. Lay the canvas on top and cut the felt to shape – leaving enough felt on the sides to wrap around (Or measure it out)

2. Use the hot glue gun to attach the felt to one side of the canvas

3. Pull the felt tight and glue the felt on the opposite side

4. It’s probably best to cut wedges from the corners now, to get them to lay flat. I didn’t do this very well, though

5. Glue the pieces over the back of the canvas

6. Glue down the other two sides, making sure to pull the felt tight

7. Enjoy your new felt board!

What can you do with your felt board? Well I started by making some ground for it – cutting a piece of green felt in half and then cutting ‘grass’ from the top. Then you let your imagination go wild . . . in our house, that meant nursery rhymes!

A nearly finished felt board set . . .

Stay tuned for patterns and tutorials for different felt board pieces!

Do you remember felt boards as a kid? What nursery rhyme would you make?

 

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