Adventures in Plastic Canvas….

Happy Sunday folks, we have another snowy, stay at home, weekend here in Maine and I love it! Recently my girls learned how to stitch on plastic canvas. Their school bus driver prepared little kits for the kids who rode the bus to work on during their rides to and from school. It was a hit with many of the children and my kids asked me if I could get them some supplies to use at home. So the other day I picked up some needles and 7 point plastic canvas and made them up a few project kits. I found some patterns online for free and I also put some plain graph paper in page protectors because free plastic canvas patterns for kids were not as easy to come by as I thought they would be. I tried my hand at making a “minecraft creeper” pattern for my son and lo and behold it turned out OK! Later I realized that patterns for fuse beads (pearler) would also work quite nicely for plastic canvas.

Yesterday I sat on the floor in the living room with my 3 kids and the prepared projects and attempted to guide them on their plastic canvas journey (mind you, I have not used the stuff in MANY years) and within 10 minutes we were all frustrated…how Bus-driver Sue managed to get several kids going on projects AND drive a school bus is beyond me.  Then I thought, I need to leave them to it and let them figure out how to re thread their own needles and discover what stitching method makes sense to them. I left the room and all was well.

Before I let the kids know I had the plastic canvas supplies I gave them some choices as to the projects they wanted to make. Maizy wanted to make Mario, Lila wanted to make American Gil doll shoes and Jack wanted a minecraft creeper. I looked to see what was available online for free and let them pick from what I found. Then I took a heavyweight page protector and placed the printed pattern, cut plastic canvas piece and yarn for the project inside (see above photo. ) Then I pout all of the kits in a 3 ring binder. The needles are kept in the packaging they came in and a pair of scissors are in the front pocket of the binder so they do not get lost.

I did not buy any yarn for this (they have the small cards of yarn for $1.39 right next to the plastic canvas supplies at the craft stores if you need it) because I have a lot already. Instead I took my large merchandise tags from papermart (they come in a box of 1000 so I have loads of them) and wrapped them with many colors I already had of worsted weight yarn. They fit perfectly in baseball card page proctors. It keeps them tangle free and in view. If the kids use up a color I can simply refill it from my stash and it is cheaper than buying the small amounts made for plastic canvas. You can get a 10 pack of baseball card page protectors at Dollar Tree.

We are in day 2 of plastic canvas crafting. Lila has almost completed a pair of 18″ doll flip flops, Maizy is half way done with Mario and Jack finished his creeper. Oh, and I had to get in on the fun too and I made a pair of American Girl size flip-flops too using this adorable pattern. Idid not put elastic on mine so they fall off the doll pretty easily, I put the elastic, as the pattern suggests, on Lila’s and they stay on quite well. They are a little rough around the edges…and in the middle…and the back, well you are not seeing the back…that’s why it is the back ha ha, but all in all not bad and we had fun which is the whole point!

I recommend that you keep the binder upright so the yarn cards do not slip out or you could put everything in a box rather than a binder. Another tip is for you (the parent) to cut out the patterns for your child, you can get a lot of projects from a 10″x13″ 50 cent sheet of canvas and you are less likely to make a mistake (hopefully) than your kid 😀 Enjoy your weekend and if you have the kids home this week on vacation you have another idea of what to craft with them. Til next time happy crafting!