Family History Tree Tutorial

17 May

Posted under Tutorials
By Missy

*Tutorial made by Kate @ See Kate Sew for her win during the Kids Can Do challenge*

You need:
velcro
vintage sheet or print fabric for the back
white fabric (I used a white sheet for this…leftover from my ruffle duvet)
heavy weight home decor fabric for names and boxes
a baby photo and recent photo for 12 family member/ancestors

make the game pieces
Scan in all of your photos and print them out onto your fabric paper. This is my favorite kind, June Tailor from fabric.com. Make sure to format them in whatever program you are using so they are all the same size. Mine are 3″ wide by 4″ tall.

Cut them out, leaving as much space around the edges as possible.
(This is my cute husband.)

For each piece, you’ll also need a back layer of white fabric and some inner layers for stability. I raided my scrap pile for the interfacing. I used one piece of felt or two layers of duck cloth. Both worked great and feel pretty much the same.

Cut your velcro into strips and put it on your back layer. I recommend sew-in but ended up using adhesive because I bought the wrong kind. (I was staring at sew-in but grabbed stick-on)…oh well!)

Then stack them up. You should have your photo right sides together with your velcro piece and the interfacing sandwiched against the wrong side of the photo. Got that?

Pin it together.

And sew along the line of the photo. Leave about 1.5″ open so you can turn it.

Trim your edges and turn it right sides out.

Pin up your open space and sew it using a blind stitch.

Continue until you have a baby photo and more recent photo for each person.

Oh look there’s baby me!
…………………………
make the game board
Each person has their own little section on the game board. Made from rectangles of white fabric measuring about 8 1/4″ wide by 8″ tall. I cut out rectangle from the home dec fabric, 3″ by 4″ to match the size of the game pieces. The home dec fabric is backed with heat n bond, ironed in place, and then topstitched.

names
I thought it would be fun to make each person’s name what my baby would call them. I cut out each name from home decor fabric backed with heat n bond. It took forever.

So, first back some fabric with heat n bond.

Print out all your letters in a font you love

Pin them on and cut them out.

Then iron them in place on your game board section.

Add velcro to your boxes.

When you’re done cutting out letters, you may want to vacuum the carpet.

Since I used a black and cream color for the names, I didn’t really like how they looked with patches of cream. It was hard to read the names. I filled in the edges with a black prismacolor marker, like so:

You may not have to do this, depending on the fabric you use.

assemble game board
Lay out all your pieces how you want them (I did velcro later on most of them). Sew them together. I sewed them into rows first and then sewed the rows together.

Then put some batting in the middle and back it with your sheet or fabric. I used a little old quilt that I made but didn’t really like. I couldn’t throw it away of course, so now it’s happily padding up my game board. Pin it all together

(hidden old quilt)
Baste around the edges and then cover it with quilt binding. I stitched in the ditch down the rows to keep the backing in place.
Add a pocket on the back and you’re done!