Felt Saltine and Cheese Crackers

Materials needed for saltine crackers:Butter cream-colored feltWool battingNeedle and thread and/or sewing machine For Cheez Nips: Yellowish-orange felt Needle and thread Sewing machine Okay, on to the next fun, felt food project! Youve already made assorted felt foods for your daughters play kitchen, or maybe this will be your first, so lets get started on making some saltine and other crackers. Youll find it exciting to see the finished products, made from felt, that look so realistic! Use an off-white or butter cream color of felt to get started on saltine crackers. The color of the felt is one of the most important things to making convincing fake foods. For example, most people would call saltine crackers "white", but in reality, theyre not stark white. Choosing the right felt color is essential.

Stack two pieces of felt together and cut them to be 2 ?" x 2 ?". It will take two squares to make each cracker. If you have a cracker and no tape measure, just draw around it. A real cracker can also help you make dots on the felt in the pattern of the dots on a cracker. If you have no cracker, make a row of three dots then a row of two, then another row of three, a row of two and a row of three. Space them evenly apart and evenly from the ends. Mark both felt crackers with the dot pattern. Cut a piece of wool batting to be 2" x 2". Place it between the two cracker shapes. Sew around all four sides using thread that matches the felt well.

You will need to hand-sew to make the indentations on the crackers. Thread a needle, double the thread, then bring the two ends together and tie a knot. Push the needle down through one set of dots on the cracker shapes. Come back up, but instead of bringing the needle out through the same area, work it between the felt shapes, then bring it up through a different hole. Go back down through that hole, to the opposite side, push the needle back into the same area, but bring it out through a different hole. Continue doing this until youve added a thread to each hole marked on the dot pattern. Its important that you pull the threads a little tight or youll have a thread at each dot but no indentations. Tie a tiny knot at the last dot to end it. The crackers are finished! Make tiny Cheez Nips by using a yellowish-orange felt. Each cracker will be an inch and a half square. Stack two pieces of the felt then draw the squares all over and sew around them. Its much easier to sew many at a time than to cut each set of squares and sew them together. To do this, draw rows which are long, but which are only an inch and a half square, and leave a thin strip of felt between each row. Now you can sew up and down the long rows to make many crackers at a time. Do this to the vertical as well as the horizontal rows, stitch all the rows, then cut out the individual crackers. Use a needle and thread to sew a tiny indentation into the middle of each Cheez Nip. After that, youre done. Its fun to save a discarded box and use it to store the crackers. Or, just place some on a plate or in a bowl and set them out. Theyre very realistic!