Thank you for buying a Mermaid’s Purse strawberry making kit!  Maybe someone sweet gave it to you as a gift?

Soon, you’ll have a whole heap of these, above, I made mine into strings of strawberries, for hanging around the house, in kids spaces (or family spaces if you like that sort of thing – we had starfish in the living room for a couple of years..)

Contents:

The kits come in different sizes, but you will have everything you need, red felt, green felt, corn fiber filling, a needle, pins, a length of string to hang your strawberries, a template to cut out and instructions.

You will need a pair of scissors, and if you’re little and haven’t done much sewing you might need someone to help with threading the needle.

To start, cut out the template..

…and fabric pieces, remember to start close to an edge, you have to get a number of strawberries out of this piece of fabric.

Cut out the leaves too!

to sew the strawberry body, fold and pin the straight edges together, you will start sewing from the base of the strawberry (the pointy end)

With the red thread, start sewing running or straight stitch…

See, just in and out, following about 5 mm from the edge…

Almost done, you need to stop almost halfway around the top curve.

So, stop just here, and now you’re going to sew back the way you came to reinforce your stitches.

Sweet…  now, we need to gently turn the strawberry in the right way, take care as felt can be a bit stretchy.

Now, divide the stuffing so you will have about the same amount for each strawberry, and gently stuff it.

Now, you need to gather the top in with small tight stitches.  This is how I do it, I visually halve the opening and stitch it to the opposite side of the opening.

Then the same again, nice and firm with the stitch, but take care not to stretch the felt.

Working all the way around and across.

Then with a couple of extra stitches, pull it all in to secure it and neaten it up.

Choice!  Now the leaves.

To make a string of strawberries, think about how you want to space them out, and after each strawberry is finished, you might like to pin them on and see how it works, then you can move them around before you sew them on.  Place the string over the gathered top.

The leaf sits on top and hides the join.  Secure with a pin.

Then, using the green thread and sewing from under the leaf, (remember to poke the needle through the string once or twice to hold it in place) stitch the leaf on.

See?  If you work around and in a diagonal, you can bunch the top up nicely.

When you’re done, pull the thread through and knot it under the leaves, so it’s hidden.

Viola!  I Strawberry of your own!