Sewing/Toys - We Love Crowns!

I've finally finished the yo-yo reggio give-away crown that I started for Fiona in Denver so many weeks back! There are so many cool crowns that you can see on-line and in a variety of books out there. Amanda Blake Soule shows a nice version in The Creative Family. I got my original inspiration from the tutorial at Juicy Bits and the blog posting at Koala Brains.

I somewhat followed the Juicy Bits tutorial, but as usual I changed it up according the materials I had on hand. In some versions of the crowns that I've made so far, I've used cardboard or a thicker felt inside the crown body, instead of interfacing material. The pictures you see here show several layers of felt to make a sturdier crown body. I've also played with machine stitching and hand stitching. Fiona's crown is primarily hand-stitched, just because I liked the way it looked and I felt like hand stitching. For better or worse, I think I'll always be an improvisor! You might want to follow the more formal tutorial, or just follow along with my improvisational photo essay.


Playing with the initial layout. I just didn't like the look of those yellow stars...


These colors worked better!


I used a simple running stitch to sew her initial onto a felt diamond.


I stitched the square to the front of the crown body and added some embroidered spirals. Because I really like spirals.


I sewed a strip of the butterfly fabric to the bottom of the crown body. I made a fabric sleeve from the same fabric, to make the back elastic holder. These are the seams that I machine stitched.


This shows the fabric sleeve with the elastic inside of it. I machine stitched both ends, to make sure that the elastic would stay in. You can see on the crown body that I added gold/brass buttons.




After I sewed the elastic onto the crown body, Sam graciously modeled.

I don't have a picture of the wand, but I made it with the same butterfly fabric that's on the crown. I cut out two free-form stars (because I like free-form stars!) and sewed them together. I stuffed the star with quilt batting, then attached it to a wooden dowel. Finally I tied on a variety of ribbons and finished it with some glue. I hope Buffy will share some photos when Fiona gets the package in the mail!