The Love of Playcloths

Our children imaginative play a lot. The younger ones especially love dressing up and playing all sorts of interesting games. This is Moran very earlyin the morning making a home with her baby out of play cloths on the trailer. She is draped in play cloths as well.

One way they have added variety and interest to these games is by using play cloths.
I made these about 9 years ago after reading about them in Toymaking with Children. The copy I had, I borrowed from the library, since then of course I have bought it as it has many creative and beautiful ideas for creative and imaginative play.

As they were expensive to buy and I knew I could make a greater variety if I sewed them myself, however I splurged a bought some silk ones from Winterwood in Melbourne, because I knew at that stage I could not make these ones.

The play cloths I made were of various fabrics and sizes. There are some quite large ones that are about 90cm x 1.5 m right down to about 30cm x 30 cm.

The fabrics vary too. We have homespun, muslin, satin, chiffon, organza and pane velvet. All of them are used extensively. We use them in dressing up for feast days as well along with the few made costumes I have made over the years.
Naturally when I made the play cloths I wanted play stands to go with them. Back then I did not know where we could buy them and even if we did they would have been out of our price range. So once again Braedon, who was about 11 at the time made these for me based on a pattern in the Toymaking with Children book.

We have been very blessed by Braedon's wood working skills over the years.

When Moran was turning two I hand painted her a rainbow silk (this was my first attempt at dying silk) that I made into a rainbow house for little dolls and wee folk.
Last year we hand painted some play cloths. Instead of dip dying we use a paintbrush and paint them. You can achieve a very soft and varied look this way.
It is very easy and the little ones even did a creative job on this.
These are some seasonal silks and muslins we made back then.
We took pictures naturally and if any one is interested I could do a post on this very easy but beautiful craft.

Blessings,