Felt Sword Tutorial

Remember the post about making a Felt Shield?  Well, I'm finally getting around to posting about the swords that went with it. 

 

First I started out with something long, straight, hard, and slender.  5 months ago I tried to walk through a doorway with my Swiffer mop without pointing it up.  The mop part broke off and then broke off again after I Gorilla Glued it back together.  So I used the handle pieces to make my two swords.  I saved an mini blind opener thing to make a sword as well.  But dowels or sticks or other things with some rigidity work.  I wish mine weren't quite SOO hard because Pigg#1 has already hit Pigg#2 in the head and given her a bruise.  Grrr.  I thought of that before I made them, but Mr. Jiggs said they were really cool and not to protect the kids too much, just teach them correctly...yah yah yah.  It's still hard when my baby girl's the one who gets hit.  :(

Back to making the offending swords.  I used my handle to measure how wide to make the two felt pieces to go around the sword and how long.  It's about an inch on both sides and and extra inch of length at the top.

 Get craft fusible interfacing and fuse it to the felt.  You should have two pieces of felt with interfacing on them.

 Then I folded it in half, wrong sides together, and sewed 1/8 to 1/4 inch down the center.

 It looks like this.  Do it to both pieces.

 I then sandwiched the two felt pieces together, right sides together, and sandwiched that with quilting batting.  And sewed it all together around three sides.  I left the short straight side at the bottom open for turning.

 See?  Batting, interfacing, felt, felt, interfacing, batting.

 Turn it right side out and slip it onto your handle/stick.  Looks like a sword.  Actually, after turning mine right side out, I top stitched the seams to strengthen them and give them a better sword look.

 Now for the hand guard thing.  I made a triangle like I wanted and cut a semi-circle out of the double fold corner.

 Opened up it looked like this.

 Then I tried it on my sword and adjusted the size until I was happy with it.

 I traced it onto cardboard and cut it out.

 With a box cutter.  And then I cut out a second one.

 I traced the diamond shape onto felt and then cut and inch allowance from the tracing.  And then I cut another for a total of two.

 Then I cut the hole out of the center of the diamond and hand stitched it to the bottom of the sword.

 I cut two rectangles for the hand part...

 and sewed them together into a tube.  I tried it on the metal part and adjusted it until it fit nicely.

Hand stitch it to the other diamond you cut out.

 Glue a cardboard diamond to each of the felt diamonds.  Let them Dry.  Then put glue on the two diamonds and assemble the sword on the handle/stick with the two diamonds together.

 After it's dried, sew along the edge of the diamonds as close as you can.  Like in the shield tutorial.  Hand sew the bottom of the black piece so it's closed.  It will just look cinched closed.  But I couldn't think of a better way to do it.

Make a second set of sword and shield and have a little battle.

 See the hat Pigg#1 is wearing?  That is the first fleece hat I made that messed up and became a football helmet for Pigg#1.

These are not perfect instructions, but that's okay because the sword has some room for individual improvement.  Leave a comment if you want something clarified.