Checkerboard Project

Sarah K's tic-tac-toe game reminded me of the quilted checker board I made for my niece's birthday a couple years ago. Don't think of this as a tutorial, because I sew like I fly: by the seat of my pants. But this might be enough for inspiration at least.

materials:
* 2 different patterns/colors of fabric: the amount you need will depend on how big you want to make the mat/board
* Sturdier material for the back (I used denim)
* Quilting material/batting (see! I don't even know the right word off the top of my head!)
* Bias tape
* RicRac (ok, so you don't NEED ricrac, but it just makes everything look cuter, so why not?!)

If you know how to quilt, you know how to make this simple checker board!

Playing Pieces:
I was trying to go for a pioneer/little house on the prairie feel with this game, so some of my ideas for playing pieces were larger, older buttons or beads, wooden thread spools, metal bottle caps, round wooden chips, and things of that nature. But, since I usually fly by the seat of my pants, I didn't really have time to scout around and start a collection of those things. So instead I thanked this convenient age and drove over to the Dollar Tree and Michael's. I used glass pebble pieces for the regular pieces, and large wooden ladybugs hot-glued onto 4 pebbles for the Kings, or Queens, in this case.

I probably should have made more Queens...some players are really good!


And with the last little bit of fabric I had left over I made a little bag for the game pieces.

I also included a printed sheet of game instructions. Looking back, I didn't make my board the standard size (it's supposed to be 64 squares and each player has 12 pieces). I'm not quite sure if that has made a huge difference or not in gameplay...

This project was inspired by one my mother made for my sister when we were little. I always thought it was so pretty! My sister has saved it these twentysome years, and I made her take it out so I could get a photo and we had fun talking about it. Mom made it out of a flat, square piece of wood, covered it in fabric, with felt on the bottom, then cut out white squares and put them in the pattern, with glued ric-rac borders. so fun!

No matter how you do this project, you can make it special!