rainy day women

We found a photo recently of my older daughter wearing a little yellow wooden toy watch bracelet. She loved it very much indeed, and then lost it. The photograph brought all the pain back. There was a lot of fruitless searching and some tears. I guess no one forgets their first watch.

At the same time, a book my mum recently gave me had a project to make a fabric watch. 

And so a visit to a friend's house on a rainy day with four little girls to entertain became a fantastic crafting session.

We made ours a little simpler than the one in the book, which, whilst lovely, was a process more for the grown ups. 

We measured little wrists, then chose a felt colour and a fabric scrap. Using pinking shears we cut a strip with a circle shape in the middle the same length as the wrist, to make the base of the strap. Then the fabric scrap was cut the same shape but slimmer so as to leave a little gap around the edge.

Then a quick go on the sewing machine to stitch the two together. The faces were cut from felt or another scrap and hand sewn on with a few stitches. On one of them I made the stitches into the digits.

Each girl decided what her favourite time of the day was (one o'clock and ten o'clock respectively) and this was drawn on with a permanent marker. I had some big ideas about moving hands using paper fasteners, but decided to keep it simple. And we had no paper fasteners.


Strangely, neither of them recognised the Withnail (or Marwood) quote about a stopped clock being right twice a day that had their mothers giggling. 

A press stud was sewn on by hand and, done!

We even had a bit of time, creative energy and felt left for some binca:

some bead sweets:

and some hairclips:

Lovely.