I had an idea...personalized felt placemats. Each person in the family can have one placemat specifically for them (their color eyes, hair, etc.). I think kids would love it. It might also help kids to not fight at the dinner table over who gets to sit where. You could also add a coaster with the person's name on it. Now here's how I did it...
-First I traced a circular pan lid (because it was the size I wanted).
-Then I drew the face inside it. I traced parts of it over to seperate sheets of paper so I could cut them out and use them as my stencils.
-Next I cut the pieces out of the colors of felt that I wanted.
-I used a machine to sew most of the pieces on. I didn't worry much about the back stitching on the ends. I was covering the whole thing in vinyl later so I figured it would be fine.
-I chose to hand stitch in a couple places like the eye brows. I also hand stitched the nose, eyelashes, and mouth.
-To hide the stitching I sewed a layer of felt on the back and machine stitched all the way around.
-Then I cut two circles of vinyl and hand sewed a layer of vinyl on each side. (I don't know if there's a trick that makes it easy to sew vinyl on a machine, but I couldn't do it).
-Trim off any extra vinyl and ta da! You're finished.
To Clean: just wipe with a damp rag. Don't get the edges very wet since they're not completely sealed.
It also works as a pretty good frisby :D
