I’ve seen a few pictures of this game made from denim and thought they looked really nice, so I decided to make one for myself with my denim scraps. I’m currently working on my “Christmas Shouldn’t Cost the Earth” project and thought this would be a good stocking filler.
Here’s how to make one of your very own.
You will need:
- Denim scraps of 2 or 3 different shades or colors, and a little stuffing. I used jeans offcuts and stuffing from an old cushion, but you could also use cut-up fabric scraps.
Steps:
- Prepare the board: Cut your denim board. Mine is 18 cm square (7″). I cut it using pinking shears to prevent too much fraying around the edges. You could sew a small hem around each edge instead.
- Mark out the lines on the fabric for the board using a white pencil and ruler, then stitch along those lines using a tight zigzag on your machine.
- Make your game pieces: For each piece, cut 2 squares of denim. Mine were 5 cm square (2″). Then, cut the circles and squares from a lighter denim. For the crosses, I cut two strips and just laid them across each other. I did not use a template but just cut all of these freehand.
- Stitch these circles and crosses, one to each square of denim you just cut. Now take one square with a circle on and one with a cross on. Sandwich them together with the appliqué shapes facing outwards like this: Stitch around 3 edges of each of these square pairs, then push a little stuffing inside each. Then stitch the final edge closed, and trim all 4 edges with pinking shears. You could also snip the edges after you stitch to create a ragged effect which looks really nice too but is a lot more work.
- Repeat this for all 9 game pieces – and that’s it, you’re finished!
Optional: I decided to make a small drawstring bag to keep the game in – using this tutorial here. The pieces I cut for the bag sides were about 17 x 20 cm (6.75 x 8″). The game board and pieces fit nicely inside. So now I have my very own travel set of Tic Tac Toe – or as we call it here in Australia – Noughts and Crosses. It would make a great little gift.
