felt TMNT masks

Last year the boys started watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It wasn't long before they chose their favorite Turtles and started acting out their favorite scenes. I made them masks out of some old jersey fabric I had. It didn't look right, but they have good imaginations.

When my parents came in January, my mom brought me some felt. The first thing I did was let the boys choose a color and make quick masks out of them. Nate had red for Raphael. There was no orange for Ben's Michelangelo, so he went with anonymous green. Of course, the felt stretched out. By now they need to be thrown away. 

For Ben's birthday, I decided to make a set of better felt masks. I didn't have all the right colors for the Turtles, but Ben said he wanted one of every color I had.

I made the pattern by trial and error: cut, hold it up to his face, cut some more, and repeat. I back-stitched around all the edges for reinforcement, hopefully preventing too much stretching. 

I also reinforced the ends before sewing the elastic on, as illustrated below (that stitching didn't show up well in the pictures). I didn't have enough elastic for all six, so the last one ended up with ribbons to tie it on instead.

Ben knows about them already because of the trials, and he's very excited to get them. He's always asking if they are ready. We'll have some friends over to celebrate and have cake on Sunday, so he will open his presents from us tomorrow!