Felt Cookies

I am not a real seamstress. I muddle my way through Halloween costumes, and each year wonder why I am putting myself through this again. I might be able to hem my store-bought curtains to the right length, and I can put a button back onto a shirt, but I don't know the jargon for sewing. I've never sewn my daughter a dress, I don't spend time oohing over fabric online. It just isn't my own personal creative outlet.

But every now and then, a project (a small, very easy project) will catch my eye and I'll dig out my hand-me-down sewing machine and I'll give it a try. Last year I was at a birthday party for one of my little son's friends, and one of the moms had sewn some adorable felt food for the gift for her child to bring to the party. Oh, it was so cute! Now, it must be said that this mom is a very accomplished seamstress and makes a-m-a-z-i-n-g fabric masterpieces all the time, so I knew I'd never be able to duplicate what she made.

But I remembered them.

Then when I was getting ready for the Sesame Street party, and thought of doing a cookie relay race, I knew this was the perfect opportunity to try making some felt goodies of my own. I'm sure there is a right way to do this. There are probably patterns out there that would give a perfect result, but this is what I came up with.

I had two tones of brown in my fabric scraps bag, which was handy.

I used the lid from a large spices jar to trace circles on the light brown fabric.

Then I cut around with pinking shears for that cute zig-zag look.

To make the chocolate chips, I just free-handed some small circles with my regular fabric scissors. They are not perfectly round, but they were good enough.

Using a needle and some dark brown thread, I hand-sewed the chocolate chips to the light brown circles, (on the side without the circle tracing marks) with a large X in the middle of each chip. I did my best to scatter the chocolate chips, rather than have them in an even pattern, because that just isn't the way cookies look. I also did different numbers of chips on the cookies. Some had 3, some 4, and some 5, just to give them some variety.

Using the same spice-jar lid, I traced the shape on a bit of batting, and cut them out. Then I put a circle of batting on a piece of light brown, and layered the chocolate chip circle on the top.

Then I pinned the stack together.

And sewed around the edge, trying my best to keep the seam just inside of the zigzag edge.

The last thing I did was to get out the pinking shears again, and cut around the bottom fabric, matching it up with the top circle.

Repeat, repeat, repeat...

Here is my plate of felt chocolate chip cookies. I made 8 of them, and it took me about two hours from start (digging out the fabric) to finish, (sweeping up the threads on the floor) so it wasn't a huge undertaking. And really, for me, it was a very successful sewing project.

I just might try making more felt food. Who knows.