I made a castle out of a card table.

And apparently I'm never going to take better pictures, so you get these.

A month or two before Christmas I saw this play castle on Etsy. The kids are (were) forever asking me to make a tent out of ours by throwing a blanket over it, so I just knew they would love it. I had SO much fun making this. It really started an addiction to making things with felt.

I started with the door side, since it seems obvious that they will need a door.



The purple bit to the left is a little mailbox, complete with a flap so you can actually put mail in it. I didn't know who would be King or Queen at any given time, so it has a crown on it for identification. The door has velcro to hold it closed. And the porch light, of course.



This side is the castle proper. I left the canvas behind the felt window to give it a bit of body. It's very sturdy, but the canvas is unraveling a bit. Might do that differently were I to make another.
 The orange things inside are from the Nerf guns. The castle makes a good target.


This side has a tower (obv) that makes me think of Repunzel. The flowers and leaves are only stitched on through the middles, so the petals are 3D.



The last side was really challenging for me. The inspiration castle had a dragon and a knight on it, but I knew I wasn't up to making a dragon and since I wanted the girls to enjoy it as well I didn't want to do a knight. I ended up with this Sword in the Stone, and the knight's abandoned helm. You can actually see through the helm (please ignore the fact that you'd have to lie on the floor to do so) and I sewed a little pocket in front of the felt sword so that they could slide a toy sword inside and pull it out trimuphantly.

I had a few issues with it fitting properly, that would have been easily corrected if I'd been able to set it up during the making process. While I was able to make all four panels right in front of my kids ("Mom, why are you making so many flowers?"), I didn't want to set the entire shebang up while they were watching. And since I worked every single night until midnight, I wasn't about to do it at 1 am! So there are a few baggy spots. I was unable to take it in more without getting into the designs.

Do they love it? Sadly, no. They barely even noticed it. Regardless, it was a lot of fun to make and I think once the Princess is better at interactive play it might get more use.