How To Make A Pond Felt Playmat

This pond playmat was made using a combination of wet felting and

dry felting too. I think it's a beautiful plaything ( OK the ducks are plastic but I can't find any wooden

ones for singing 5 Little Ducks.)

We started with some hand dyed wool from a craft shop in Brecon.
It was a small amount but I think you really need double or triple this amount as it gets thin when wet.
Tear up the wool into strands and cross them over into a circle on a some plastic.

Big Seed then patted it with dishsoap and warm water, and used a sushi mat to get the fibres to stick together but as it was so thin,
we had to be gentle. There are many decent wet felting tutorials on the net.
 We laid it outside on a table to dry

I cut out some lilypads from green felt freehand, then sewed a lily flower together like this.

I made a lilypad pocket for the frog to hide in.

We got impatient so Big Seed put it on his clothes line to dry.

It was a bit thin in parts so I decided to attach it to a piece of green felt with a felting needle.
Big Seed has this plastic needle-felting contraption which holds 4 needles very safely.
Here he is needle-felting the pieces together on a pillow...with Little Seed getting ever so closer!

Here it is finished. I didn't attach the lilypads as Big Seed loves to arrange things.
Beautiful.

What happens first?
He puts the orange gnome to sleep in the lilypad pocket in the corner
...no sign of a frog anywhere!

Then he thinks it's much better to pile up those lovely lilypads in the corner on top of the gnome...
and what he needs is a big wooden mushroom to go on the lilyflower!

But that mushroom wasn't big enough.
We need a giant green mushroom to sit right on that lilyflower!

No, no, what we really need is to get rid of that nice lilyflower altogether,
and put the mushroom in a wooden bowl in the pond!
Now out comes the olympic frog...he has to jump all the way from the wall to the mushroom in one huge jump!

Big Seed starts making huge jumps as he personifies the frog and saying "ribbit, ribbit."

What is happening here is that although he hasn't used the pond in the way I envisaged,
he has used his imagination, which is the whole point of the toy.

He was having a great time making Little Seed and myself laugh so much,
 until Little Seed needed a nap, and the spell broke.

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