Chugga Chugga Choo Choo

It is lovely Noah's first birthday and I had decided to make him something for his big day. I heard via the grapevine, ok, Mum, that he was getting some Chuggington trains for his birthday and so an idea started to form. 

Have you seem this awesome car caddy tutorial at homemade by jill? 

I totally love it and have had it bookmarked for soooo long waiting to make it. So with Noah's big day approaching I thought why not? I headed off to Spotlight with my list in hand (oh I have to add a child free trip, it wouldn't have been fun with little ones wanting to leave whilst I was choosing fabric) and wandered around gathering my supplies. 

I had it in my mind that I would use the basis of the tutorial but tweak it and make a train caddy. Less pockets, but bigger ones, train tracks instead of a road and of course a chugging train on the front and not a car, and amazingly the picture in my mind came to fruition.

The pictures show the finished specimen.

As you can see I chose a black denim, and grey cotton drill for the main inside colour. The tracks are the softest wool blend felt (not cheap but feels so nice) and the actual tracks are a black satinish piping I think. I found it on a huge reel in the trims section when looking for the white piping for the edging. When I saw it I immediately thought tracks and then I cut it to size and hand sewed the pieces on. The tracks are a little wonky but I hope Noah won't mind. 

On the front I found a simple picture of a train from a children's colouring page and cut it out in felt. I used Wonder Under to attach the felt to the denim but it did not work! No sticking at all. So I appliqued around the wheels and steam clouds which actually gave it really nice texture and then just hand sewed a couple of stiches on corners to hold the body of the train down. 

I also found black belting and velcro as I wanted it to just blend into the denim and I think I achieved that in the end.

I am happy with it and learned new things along the way, which is always a bonus I think, but find it so frustrating along the way when I have to go back and unpick, which more than often is down to me and my rush to finish and perhaps not understanding the instructions properly.

What did I learn? Well I had never used piping before on the edges of something, and when the tutorial suggests that you attach the velcro before the end of everything LISTEN. Hand stitching through that and denim was a killer. As per the tutorial I did attempt to paint on the denim using acrylic paint and stensils but they bled terribly and looked dreadful so whilst it was still wet I managed to wash the paint off and had to leave if for a day or so to dry. Then using felt cut out the numbers and hot glued them on. Phew it turned out ok. 

So is another car caddy on the drawing board? Totally! Watch out Issac a home for Lightening McQueen will be on his way to you very shortly.