How is your summer going along? Summer holidays have just started over here and we’re planning on a leisurely six weeks, with trips to the beach and lots of relaxing: reading, crafting, having picnics… Since many of those activities will be combined, especially reading at the beach, I needed some bookmarks for the kids that would not immediately fall out of the books when the books get tossed in a beach bag. So I made some fun bug bookmarks that will absolutely stay put at the right page, due to the elastic that is going around the book. If you’d like to make some as well, keep reading for the tutorial and the free downloadable template for the bugs!
Requirements:
– Scraps of felt in the desired colours;
– Nice elastic, fold-over elastic or other coloured elastic, 16″ per bookmark;
– Bug template, which you can download here;
– Matching thread;
– Black permanent marker;
– Usual sewing supplies.
Print the template. The template includes pieces for three different bugs, from top to bottom on the template: a ladybug, a bee and a butterfly. Cut the shapes out of felt. For each bookmark, you’ll need two “bug-bodies” and one of each of the other pieces. All cut-out pieces are pictured above.
First, assemble the top parts of the bugs by layering the pieces as pictured above.
Sew the loose pieces on top of one of the body-pieces, by stitching along the edge of the pieces with a straight stitch.
After sewing on the loose parts (except the bee’s wings!), draw dots on the red shields of the ladybug with a black permanent marker.
Make a loop of the elastic and sew it closed with a wide zigzag stitch.
Place the elastic on top of the body-part that is still blank. Make sure the stitching on the elastic is nice in the middle of the body.
Place the other, embellished, part of the body on top of the other one, thus sandwiching the elastic in between.
Sew along the outer edge of the bug, thus enclosing the elastic and joining front and back body part together.
For the bee, there are some additional steps to attach the wings.
First, attach the little black head to the yellow body.
Draw some black lines on the body, parallel to the head. Now create your loop of elastic and sew the bee on.
Finally, sew the wings on top of the bee. If you’d attach the wings before sewing in the elastic, you would get a line of stitching all over the wings, instead of on the edge.
To create the butterfly, the method is similar to making the ladybug: first sew the caterpillar on top of one body piece, than join front and back body, with the elastic loop in between.
Now off to the library to get some summer reading!
