Fabric Mailbox and More Postcards

My daughters love the fabric postcards I've been making.  I toyed with the idea of making a fabric mailbox, but wasn't sure.












This week, my younger daughter requested a snowman postcard.  It came out so cute, I made a few more.  Now that my daughter had two of her very own postcards, I decided to try out a fabric mailbox.

I found a couple tutorials I liked.  I loosely followed this mailbox tutorial.  I had seen another tutorial that used a button for the flag and velcro at the door and liked those features.  

Fortunately I had the plastic canvas at home already as I hoped to make a fabric dollhouse at some point.  I determined the size by taking one of my 4"x6" postcards and making it a bit bigger.  Then, I shaped a mailbox shape and, along with a helper, traced the shape onto paper.  This became the front and back flaps.  Then I used the width of the flaps for the bottom piece.  

I laid everything out together with small spaces between the plastic and cut out some fabric.  I added thin craft batting to the outside layer of fabric.  The inside is felt.  I forgot to add the velcro to the top of the mailbox when I was sewing everything together.  It worked out fine to rip out a few stitches and insert it in.  That made it easy to get the right placement.

For the flag, I just cut some felt about the right size (2 layers) and then cut some plastic canvas a bit smaller.  I did a zigzag stitch around the outside.  For the button, I just cut a small slit in the flag through all the layers.  Then when I sewed the button on, I was careful to have every stitch go through the slit.  It was a little tricky, but made for nice stiff flag.

My girls love the mailbox and another has been requested.  We will see.