Friday, January 22, 2010

Muffin! Muffin! Who Wants a Muffin? - Felt-Food Cook-Along Day 10

I was going to do sliced bread next, but when I went back and looked there were very few pics.  So I'll need to make another one...and I kind of want to try out a machine version.  Anyway...today you get blueberry muffins (which I secretly feel pretty tricky for figuring out the blueberry part...the credit for the muffin part goes to Maggie at Smashed Peas and Carrots.
There are a lot of different felt cupcakes out there.  What really drew me to this method is that it used a cupcake paper as the pattern.  For the original, you can go see Maggie at Smashed Peas and Carrots. We were given a minature cupcake/muffin tin a while ago that I almost threw out because we don't usually cook on that scale.  It went into the growing pile of stuff to go into the kids' play kitchen though, and I thought I'd custom make the muffins to fit inside the tin.

If you're looking for a less real looking, but more educational version of cupcakes, be sure to check out my letter and number-matching cupcakes/muffins.


Materials: Cream or natural brownish felt, blue or purple felt, needle thread, sewing machine and freemotion foot (although you could do this by hand and/or without the freemotion foot, pair of sharp pointy scissors, stuffing and/or chopped up felt scraps for fill

Before reading these directions, you really should go look at the ones on Smashed Peas and Carrots because her pictures are better than mine I think.  The main difference in mine is adding the blueberries. 

I didn't have a cupcake paper to use as a pattern, so I made my own.  I started by squishing some notebook paper down into the cupcake tin and then taping the wrinkles so they would hold.  (The picture is after I'd traced the top line for the cup, but hadn't trimmed it yet.)
I also traced the top to be just a bit bigger than the hole (because there was a convenient groove there that made tracing easy.) 
If I can figure out how to upload a printable pattern, I'll do that.

Once I had the pattern, I traced the pieces onto my felt with just a regular pen, since this won't show anyway (but DON'T CUT THEM OUT YET.)  Then I cut out little blueberries.  You'll want to cut them a fair amount bigger than you want them to actually look because we're actually reverse appliquing these.  (I thought about sewing them to the top, but when I thought about how the blueberries actually look in muffins, they're usually just peaking out from behind dough.  I chose to use purple felt because I thought it looked more like real cooked blueberries than the blue felt I had available. 
I started out cutting out neat little circles, but then wised up and realized the edges wouldn't show, so I just cut rectangles. 
I pinned them on in a "random" looking way over the pieces on the same side the pen marks are on. 
Then I got out my free-motion foot I've been playing with and some purple thread and sewed curly q's all over and made sure some of the loops made circles on the blueberries.  For some of the bigger rectangles, I sewed two circles on them so there would be two blueberries close together. I didn't really worry about securing the stitches when I started or stopped because most of the stitching is decorative anyway.  I also let the stitching run from one piece to the next, so I didn't have to start and stop sewing a bunch.  (So far the kids have loved playing with them and no threads have come loose.

Cut your pieces apart.
Next get out your little pointy scissors and let your blueberries peek through, and cut out your muffin pieces. 
Now you're ready to sew your muffin, which I did all by hand using a whip stitch.  First I sewed the side seam. 
Then I sewed the bottom on, and then I sewed the top, leaving enough of an opening to stuff it before I sealed it up.  The thing about the top is you will need to take just slightly larger stitches on the top then you do on the side since the top circle is just a bit big.  This will also make the muffin poof up a bit more, but if you're worried about this, you could just trim the circle a tiny bit smaller and take the same size stitches. 
I stuffed it (as is usual for me) with chopped up felt scraps.  I did put just a tiny bit of real stuffing on the very top though.

Then bake...
And serve...
I made four muffins and plan to make some chocolate and some other kind of cupcake to fill up the muffin tin.

NEW ADDITION!!  The Printable Pattern!
Also, I wanted to add a few things I've learned as I made some chocolate cupcakes using this pattern.

I've started stuffed them tighter and only used chopped up felt scraps.

I should warn you about the pattern below is that the top circle is just a little bit big. As you sew it onto the bottom, every few stitches, you'll need to take a couple slightly bigger stitches on the top than the cooresponding stitches on the sides. This will gather the top, ever so slightly and make the top poof out more...or if that sounds too intimidating, then cut the top circle, just a TINY bit inside the lines.

Click here for the Printable Felt Muffin Pattern. 










8 comments:

  1. Cute! What a clever way of adding blueberries. Adding this to my growing list of things to try. Thanks for sharing!

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  2. Oh my gosh, these are adorable!

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  3. Theses were my favorites out of all the foods you gave SweetPea for her birthday. They are perfect for little hands!

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  4. Wow, what a wonderful tute! Thank you so much for sharing! Definitely going in the vault for soon to be made stuff!

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  5. Oops - I meant the foods you gave to Firecracker for her birthday...I wouldn't make a very good spy...confused with the code names. :)

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  6. These are absolutely adorable. You are so right about observing the real food to make incredible felt food, yes blueberries are sunk in, and that purple is great. I'm going to have to make some of these after Halloween month is over. :-) I might throw in the occasional blueish blueberry too. But I also have a billion colors of wool felt.

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  7. Must confess didn't use your pattern as wanted to make them in scale with my grand daughter's play dishes, but thoroughly appreciate your idea, instructions and inspiration, so THANk YOU.
    A tad off subject, hope you don't mind me adding a hint for making 'meatballs'. After several attempts of constructing some (using a sewing machine) I finally restorted to making them out of yarn. (Content: 75% Mohair, 10% Wool, 10% Acrylic, 5% Nylon).
    Method: In a 1 to 4 cup measuring cup, bring water to a boil in Micro Wave. Add just a bit of laundry detergent to water. Soak the yarn ball for a few minutes. Roll between your hands, squeezing out excess water. Repeat ... until the ball begins to harden/firm up. (It took about 15 minutes for the size I did.) Let thoroughly dry, cut off fuzzies and seal with a solution of Fabric Glue diluted with a bit of water. Put some on your palms and roll it. Let Dry! Note: Re the yarn content I used; the ball did not shrink. Using a hairdryer will speed up the drying process.
    -Brenda- aka mrsben

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