 How
to Sew Your Own Travel Game
Easy instructions to make
checkers and tic-tac-toe to go!
Make this travel game
to play checkers and tic-tac-toe in the car on long trips! It's a drawstring
bag made from old fabric scraps. The game pieces are also made of fabric
and are kept inside the bag when not in use. It's fun to make, easy to
store in your car, and fun to play.
My daughter and her friend
needed to do a project for school that involved recycling. They had to
create a usable durable product from mostly recycled materials. They chose
to do a sewing project with some old sheets that would otherwise have ended
up as rags. Here's how to do it:
Materials:
-
old sheets or fabric scraps
of different colors
-
string or yarn
-
fusible webbing (very inexpensive,
available at wal-mart)
-
marker or fabric paint
First, Make the draw string
bag:
Cut a large piece of fabric
about 11" x 22". Lay a piece of string across the long edge and fold
down the fabric over it about an inch. Sew it carefully keeping the string
inside. Then fold the fabric in half and sew the two remaining edges of
the bag. Turn it inside out to keep the raw edges on the inside. You should
end up with a drawstring bag about 10" x 10".
My daughter and her friend
were in 5th grade, and this was a great first sewing project for them to
learn how to use the sewing machine.
Next, Make the game board:
|
The bag its self will become
the game board. Iron some fusible webbing onto the back of a different
colored fabric that was used for the bag. Then cut this fabric into 1 inch
squares using pinking shears. Lay the squares onto the bag (fusible side
down) in the shape of the checkers game board. It should be 8 x 8
squares (4 dark and 4 light for each row). Then iron them onto the bag.
Use the background of the bag as the dark squares, so you only have to
iron on 4 actual cut-out squares per row. |
| On the back side, use fabric
paint or a fabric marker to draw a large tic-tac-toe board. Be careful
that it doesn't soak through the fabric to the other side. You may
want to test it first on a small scrap piece before drawing it on your
game bag. |
 |
Finally, Make the game
pieces.
 Using
the pinking shears, cut at least 24 small squares about 1x1". Make half
of them a dark color and half a light color. You might want to cut a few
extras in case any of them ever get lost down in the cushions of your car
seats. Use the fabric paint to draw a crown or a "k" on one side
of each piece for the "kinged" checkers pieces. |
 To
play:
Lay the bag on your lap,
the seat next to you in the car, or on a book. The fabric game pieces are
great because they will not slide all over the place when you are riding
down the road. For checkers, each player starts with 12 pieces. Use
the plain sides up to start the game. Flip them over to the other side
that you have marked when you want to "king" a checkers game piece during
play.
You can use the same pieces
for tic-tac-toe. Instead of X and O, just use the different colors.
Store all the pieces inside the bag when you are not playing, and keep
it in the glove compartment so it's always handy! |
Have fun!
--Laurel (Road Trip Mom)
~ ..· ´¨¨))
-:¦:-
¸.·´ .·´¨¨))
((¸¸.·´
..·´ Road Trip Mom -:¦:-
-:¦:-
((¸¸.·´*
-----------------------
Laurel
Smith is a former schoolteacher and mother of three who has logged thousands
of road trip miles both as a kid and a mom. Visit her website for
more than 101 travel games and activities for kids at MomsMinivan.com
This
article is copyright ©2007 Momsminivan.com
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images associated with this article are also copyright ©2007 Momsminivan.com
and may not be republished on other websites or print media without
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For more "make your own travel games",
don't miss all the Printable Car Games at
Momsminivan.com
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