I have
finally finished the Christmas gift for Aiden and Ava... only took me two months of solid work, but I think it was worth it. It all started with a roll of paper and some matchbox cars. Jacob drew Aiden a village on a large roll of paper for him to drive his cars on the kitchen table, and in the process, Aiden was asking for specific buildings; Target, "Dad's work", our house, etc etc., he also specifically wanted a roundabout, a bridge, & a railroad track, so of course I had to add those too... the list was quite long. So from that, came this:
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| I know you're so jealous of my drawing skills, right? |
So I started with a green piece of fabric, cut down to the size of a twin sheet, then slowly but surely started to build "Millerville". It's not exactly like the drawing, but I used it as a basis for where to start. I found all my supplies at either
JoAnn's,
Hobby Lobby or
Michael's. Take a look and let me know if you like it! (I apologize for the sheer amount of pictures, there was a lot of detail on here).
I used chalk as an outline for the roads, and cut out a charcoal colored felt (measured to the width of 2 matchbox cars plus a little for the lines), then hand sewed it down. I then used a thin yellow and white rope as the lines on the edge of the road and in the middle.
Once I got the roads on, I started to put together buildings and houses. This was by far the hardest and most time consuming. Probably because I was trying to put so much detail into each individual store. I google imaged each store to get a picture of the building to give me a stating point. Then I re-drew the stores within the scale of the mat. This also made a little template to cut out the fabric with. I bought this
fabric glue, and it really helped me fold down the little edges and get small pieces into place so I could sew it down. Did I mention this was all hand-sewn? No machine at all, except for the bias tape edge. I also found this
fabric in cotton at JoAnns. You just put it through your regular inkjet printer and it prints your image directly onto the fabric. This made it
so much easier to get logos and signs that looked realistic. Here are a few more pictures, I told you there was a lot of detail!
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| The Beach |
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| Our Parent's houses, plus one to fill the neighborhood |
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| The Zoo |
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| School and Playground |
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| Ikea |
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| A few houses plus our house on the right |
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| See any resemblance to our house? |
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| Home Depot (plus a garden center!), Police Station, & Fire Station |
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| Church (looks nothing like our church but oh well) |
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| Close look at the sign, taken on our wedding day |
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| Meijer, Coscto, Target, JoAnn, Dairy Queen & Qdoba |
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| Construction Site and Railroad Tracks |
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| Farm |
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| Doors open! |
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| "Daddy's work" - Chrysler (With a Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep out front of course!) |
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| Our old house |
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| Any resemblance? |
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| Small Pond |
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| Library |
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| Speedway |
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| In all it's glory! |
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| And so they always remember when they got it.... |
So? What do you think??
