Othello with Boy, oh Boy, oh Boy Crafts

September 16, 2015 2 Comments

Welcome to another awesome project for Sew Ready to Play! Today I have a new friend joining us, Stacey from Boy, oh Boy, oh Boy Crafts. I don’t know about you, but there are a lot of kids clothes bloggers out there and it seems like 90% of them sew primarily for girls! It’s kinda like trying to shop for boys clothing, the girls department is as big as the women’s department and the boys get 3 racks. Well… When I find a good boys blogger, I’m smitten! And that’s what I found when I found Stacey’s blog! I love it! She has such great projects for her house of boys. We haven’t gotten to ‘know’ each other too well yet, but I’ve been following her for years and was totally stoked when she agreed to play along! Welcome, Stacey!

Hi! I’m Stacey and I blog over at Boy, Oh Boy, Oh Boy Crafts where I design and sew kids clothing and post about activities to keep the kids busy. I’ve been following along with the Sew Ready to Play series for the last few years and I’m so excited to be here today. I went back and forth between our three favorite board games and finally settled on sharing an Othello inspired project. I have to admit, my three sons would probably each have chosen a different game but this one is MY favorite. I can’t tell you how happy I am that the boys have moved past Candyland and Chutes and Ladders. Strategy games are our new passion and you can believe with three boys in the house, things can get pretty competitive.

I used the Bimaa Sweater pattern and altered it just a bit for a tank style sleeve with ribbing but any t-shirt pattern would work here. I feel a bit silly writing this as a tutorial, considering it’s a pretty straight forward embellishment, but I’ll run your through the basics.

First, use a ruler to measure out your stitching for the game board. I went with 2 1/2 inch boxes and played a bit with how big I wanted it to be. In the end, I decided not to stitch the last row of boxes. One of the great things about a water soluble marker is that you can just dab some water on and away the lines disappear.

Once I had the board set up to my liking, I went ahead and cut out white and black circles from wool felt.

Top stitch along your marker lines to create the game board. I used a turquoise thread to mimic the green of the original game board but any color would work. Then I switched to black thread to applique the game pieces in place. As you can see by a few wrinkles in my board that a tear away stabilizer would have been helpful. Learn from my mistake, don’t cut corner folks!

Once that’s set, move along to finishing out the rest of the t-shirt steps. I went with a fun pop of geometric print to line the hoodie and well as some contrast ribbing to add another element of play on the game board design.

It took some time for this game loving kid to pick up on the wax and wane of the game, and how often the “winner” changes hands, but let me tell you, this kid beats my butt more time than not. His brother’s better watch out because this kid is future Othello World Cup material!

Here’s the list of amazing creators that are playing along this year! Be sure to check out the other game inspired projects.