How To Make... A Fabric Memory Game.

I have been trying to encourage my two year old to speak a little bit more and was looking online for some ideas for games that we could play together. I've got a few ideas on my Pinterest page but they involved materials that I didn't have to hand. My Grandma has gradually been giving me all of her leftover fabric so I really wanted to use some of this. So when I found this I knew it was perfect! I altered the instruction a little to fit with what I had and here's how I did it:

1. Choose 10 different fabrics to be matched and one colour for the boarder and backing of the pieces. I went for blue for my boarder and backing. You will also need some fusible interfacing. (There are 20 fabrics in the picture below but I decided that it was going to take forever so decided to have just 10 matching pairs!)

2. Cut out 40 blue squares 3x3 inches and 20 squares 2.5 x 2.5 inches from the coloured fabrics (you need 2 each from the 10 different fabrics). From the interfacing you will need 40 squares 3x3 inches and 20 squares 2.5 x 2.5 inches.

3. From 20 of the blue squares cut a central square measuring 2x2 inches.

4. Iron the fusible interfacing to the coloured fabrics and the blue squares using the appropriate size squares of interfacing. 

5. Pin the coloured fabrics to the blue boarders. Sew together. (I did this by hand but it probably would have been a lot quicker to do it by hand!)

6. Iron the fusible interfacing to the back of the coloured fabric/ boarder squares and then iron together with the solid blue squares.

7. Use pinking scissors to trim each of the edges. (I probably should have sewn the two squares together but there seemed to be enough interfacing to hold it together!)

My plan is to use this initially as a matching game but there are lots of ways that it could be developed and adapted: 

1.  Play it as a memory game
2.  Play snap
3. Use it to help with colour recognition
4. Make a similar game but with numbers / alphabet 
5. Alphabet could also be made up for capital and lowercase letters

I might have to make the alphabet ones from card otherwise there's a lot of cutting and sewing involved! 

Do you use anything similar with your children?