Make Your Own Tic Tac Toe Pouch

Making your own tic tac toe pouch is a great way to introduce kids to sewing and puts a new spin on an old game.

The idea for this tic tac toe pouch came from combining a popular children’s game with the fact that kids just love carrying things around. And I have no doubt that your kids will love both the game and the pouch even more when they make it themselves.

What you need

10″ x 10″ pink felt

10″ x 10″ purple felt

Four 6″ x 3/4″ strips of pink felt

Scraps of coloured felt

Needle

Pins

Thread

Satin cord

Hole puncher

Glue (optional)

Pony beads

What to do

Cut out an 9″ pink circle from the 10″ x 10″ pink felt and a 9″ purple circle from the 10″ x 10″ purple felt.

Take the purple circle and position the four strips of pink felt on it as shown below. Pin and sew or glue into place. This game board will be on the inside of your pouch.

Using scraps of coloured felt, cut out flower shapes, circular flower centres, leaf shapes and a butterfly. Pin and sew into place on the pink circle as shown below. This design will be on the outside of your pouch.

Pin and use a running stitch to sew the pink and purple circles together. Your stitches should be about 1/4″ in from the edge.

Punch holes around the pouch about 1/2″ in from the edge. Be careful not to punch through your sewing line.

Thread the satin cord through the holes. Use the photo above as a guide.

When you’ve finished threading, bring the ends of the cord together, thread the two ends of the satin chords through a pony bead, (you can use more but one is enough to hold the chords together), and tie a knot at the end of each chord. Use the photo below as a guide.

Finally, make a set of playing pieces. You can use pebbles and shells, beans and erasers…anything really…just remember that the playing pieces do have to be visibly different so that the two players can identify their pieces from their opponents. In the top photo you can see that I’ve used glass pebbles as playing pieces. To distinguish them I’ve painted flowers on some and left others plain.

Making a tic tac toe pouch with your boys

The above flower and butterfly version of my tic tac toe pouch was made with girls in mind…actually, with the girls in my workshops in mind. They were crazy for pinks and purples.

Below is another example of this pouch that I use when sewing with boys. In Australia, this game is known as noughts and crosses, which explains the decorative noughts and crosses on the outside of the pouch.

The cord is fake leather. I used a stripped bead to help pull the pouch closed (see photo below) and two yellow beads for decorative effect at the ends of the cords.

I chose light and dark river pebbles as the playing pieces. They were objects that fascinated my own boys when they were young.

The crosses are made from 2″ X 1/2″ strips of green felt. I made a template for the noughts by drawing around a large coin then placing a small coin in the centre and drawing around it. Then I used this template to cut the noughts from felt.

The look of this tic tac toe pouch is far more earthy than the flower and butterfly version above. And it gives you a brief glimpse at how easy it can be to modify designs to suit what you want.

Hope you and your kids have heaps of fun with this, Trixi