Children's Cloth Picture Instructions - Great for a Child's Room Decoration

About the Author:  My name is Orit Dotan and I am a Waldorf handwork teacher and a doll artist in Israel.  One of my intentions as a Waldorf teacher is to be able to awaken the creative spirit, in which everyone (as human beings) have and to help them to be active and creative.

As the years pass by I have learned that less patterns and more imagination can help in reaching that goal.  These instructions I'm sharing here are trying to bring everyone to create their special picture of his inner soul life...their world of color and so on.

Please read all the instructions before you begin the project.

This project is to make a picture intended for children.  Try to imagine what you would like to bring to the children.  For example: the lion is the king of the animals, he is brave and courageous and can overcome many obstacles due to his courage.  Or think of what birds can represent and how a child can relate to a bird or other animal.

After you decide what is the subject you want to deal with you can start looking for  beautiful natural fabrics in a variety of textures for the background and other beautiful natural fabrics that have patterns on them like hearts, flowers, animals, etc.  Anything you see with your imagination!

If you can not find a template you want and you do not know to draw you can be inspired by  illustrated children books and use 100% wool felt to cut the form's shapes from.

Along the work things might change and this is the beauty in this work.

This is the picture I made and all my instructions are for this picture as an example to the method of working.  Your picture will be different, based on what you want to convey with the design.



Materials and tools:

Natural fabrics nice textures and forms, 100% wool felt a little bit bigger then the size of the picture you want to create, embroidery threads, white paper to illustrate the sketch, sketch paper to copy the different parts, pencil, eraser, scissors for paper, scissor for fabric, sewing pins, needle, glue stick



The stitches we use are: Buttonhole stitch [blanket stitch] ,Herringbone stitch [catch stitch] and Split stitch.

Instructions:

Draw the main idea for your picture on the paper.



Copy every part –part no. 1 is the background and it measures the same size as the picture, part no. 2  the part that you see here in the picture is the lowest part of the picture



Copy part #3 and leave the addition of the paper as you can see in the photo



Draw the figures on white paper and cut them out



Cut the pattern of the background [no.1] from the paper and then from the chosen fabric that you want to use for the background

Cut the felt a little bigger then the background and arrange them as shown in the photo



Do the same with pattern no. 2



Do the same with pattern no. 3



Lay the fabric that you cut as no. 2 on the background



Pick up the marginal and lay the fabric no. 3 as you see in the photo



This is what the surface of the picture looks like



And close-up, this is what the surface of the picture will look like after we will finish it



Lay down the paper forms [bunny and butterfly as example] on the chosen fabric, pin them to the fabric and cut them out



Choose fabrics with the printed forms.  I chose flowers.



And hearts.



Cut the chosen forms [in my case: flowers and hearts] leaving a little edge around the forms and arrange every thing on the surface



As you "see" the picture and if you are pleased, cut every form as it should look (cut edges), drawing lines on the main animal form if it is needed and stitch small stitches along the lines of the main form.

Now stitch or embroider the big sections -1+2+3 -to the felt surface.[ Herringbone stitch].  Next, arrange the little forms on the picture and attach the little forms with sewing pins and embroider or stitch them to the background. [ Split stitch]



Cut the edges of the picture with free hand, soft lines without corners, draw lines with pencil if it is needed.



Embroider blanket stitch [buttonhole stitch] around the edges of the pictures to create a frame.



Turn the picture and make loops for hanging the picture in this way: with double embroidery thread sew a line length 1.5" and on that line embroider Blanket stitch.  It is better to do 2 loops, one on each side, than one loop in the middle.



The finish loop looks like this:



Around the picture put glue stick.

The picture is ready!



Instructions provided by Orit Dotan of Orit Dotan Dolls.