felt food.

as promised, the felt food making has been in full swing since margot's birthday. i'm not sure what's so rewarding about making inedible replicates of edibles, but it's super addictive.

*disclaimer. upon close examination, these photos contain much kitty hair. luckily, this is not real food. consider yourself warned.

in keeping with the produce theme, margot now has an assortment of felt vegetables. for all of her fiber needs. first up salad!

or more accurately, some lettuce and a few tomato slices. this salad could use some cucumber, peppers, onions and maybe some hard boiled eggs. alas, long grows the list of completely unnecessary things that i feel inexplicable compelled to do...

the lettuce may be my favorite of the vegetables (as well as my nemesis, because i'm constantly finding it all over the house). to make it, i googled various lettuce/leaf shapes and made a template in inkscape (available here, if you want to make your own). i then spent one tv watching evening cutting the shapes out from two different shades of green felt. i could easily have stopped there and had perfectly play-with-able lettuce, but that's not how i roll. i also added veins and ribbing using my sewing machine. it really adds a great dimensionality to it. i think i have more fun making it then margot has playing with it...

then came a series of root vegetables. the construction of these was very similar to the strawberries, except that the leaves were sewn into the opening at the top rather than over it. for the radishes, i loosely followed these instructions. to make them different sizes though, i cut the finished circle into somewhat randomly sized sectors, anywhere from one half to one third of the circle. for the carrots, i just free hand cut large triangles, trying to vary the length and width. in spite of this though, the finished carrots all ended up roughly the same size...but at least they're different colors!

so there you have it. it all makes me happy. and probably keeps margot vaguely amused.

if you're worried that all of my felt food endeavors will be this wholesome, don't be. still in my to be blogged about queue are donuts, a pizza and pasta (hooray starches!).

so what should be next? sandwiches? pancakes? pot roast!?!