These dice are our 'end of the year' gift for Leah's teacher. She and her students play a game each week involving rolling large foam dice and trying to get matching numbers. Leah told me a while ago, "Mom, you really need to make Mrs. Weaver some fresh dice. The ones she has are all dirty and the numbers are coming off." I told her I could probably manage that, and one day had her secretly show them to me so I could see what they looked like. Leah was right - they were very used soft foam (think chair cushion insert) cubes with numbers painted on. You can hardly tell what the numbers were on some panels. So... fresh dice became the project.
We looked everywhere for foam cubes to paint on, but no luck. Then, during spring cleaning, I had some jeans that don't fit anymore but had plenty of usable denim so I decided they would go to the scrap bin in the sewing room rather than GoodWill. Another day or two later I came across some scrap felt and then the two ideas (denim and felt) came together in my brain and I concocted the plan to make these. I had only intended to test out some parts of it this weekend, but ended up making two entire dice. Which, if I do say so myself, are pretty cute! The pictures don't quite do them justice - they are even cooler in person. The denim should keep them durable enough for lots of rounds of kindergarten Tootsie Tuesday (the name of the dice rolling game).
Details for those who care:
1. Started with 7'' squares of denim, cut from old jeans.
2. Drew the number by hand (backwards no less!) on HeatNBond
3. Fuse letters to squares. Easy zig zag stitch around to secure them.
4. Marked a 6'' square stitching line around denim on reverse side.
5. Stitched on lines to form cube, leaving a hole for stuffing.
6. Stuff (the girls favorite part to help).
7. Close seam by hand.
I then had two stuffed cubes that were a bit too 'plump/round' and not enough 'cube'. I ended up stitching with yellow embroidery floss around each side of the cube. It makes them more 'cube' and also happens to look like the topstitching on jeans. Stitching through the denim with thick floss was killer on the fingers - I ended up sewing with a small pliers in my lap so I could use the pliers to grab the needle when it got stuck. That both sped things up and saved my fingers.
Here is a close up of the stitching and one with my hand for size reference.
Leah loves them and can't wait to take them to school so our 'end of the year gift' will probably be delivered sooner rather than later. Plus, we wouldn't want her teacher to get around to making new ones of her own before we give the gift, now would we?!
Notes to myself for later: The plan for using freezer paper to stiffen the cube sides didn't work. Paper didn't stick well enough after stitching and also made it too hard to turn the cube inside out. Fusible interfacing might work for cottons, but not in the seamlines on something as heavy as denim. The topstitching worked to achieve the same thing as the freezer paper would have. Also, K pointed out that the numbers are not in the 'proper' positions for dice. :)
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