Kids' Fishing Set Tutorial

I have seen these fishing sets ALL OVER the place on different blogs and have loved every one of them so I just had to make one for us too! Of all the blogs I looked at I liked the set from From an Igloo the best so I started there!

I first made one practice fish and felt that I wanted the shape to be a little different so I kept working with the pattern until I really liked the shape of the fish. I am not as computer savvy as some and I could not for the life of me figure out how to give you a pdf to print but I can show you the shape:

My fish pattern was 6-7/8" long- you can print this and enlarge it to that size.

Start by sewing around the fish using 1/2" allowance, leaving 2" open on the bottom. Cut around the edge with a pinking shears (sewing scissors that cut a zig zag). If you don't have a pinking shears you can snip the fabric close to the seam all the way around but this just takes a little more time than pinking shears. Turn the fish right side out, stuff, hand stitch the opening closed. To finish, sew on button eyes and a washer on the mouth.

*Reminder: magnets if swallowed can be very dangerous! Please make sure all stitching is secure and keep away from young children!*

For the fishing pole, simply take a wood dowel and drill a hole through it, lace one end of a heavy string/cotton twine through the hole and tie a knot real tight and then trim the end. For the "worm" end of the pole, take a pinking shears and cut a 2 1/2 inch circle. Then do a simple running stitch by hand about 1/2 from the edge, place a magnet in the middle and start to draw it closed. Just before you pull it tight, turn the raw edges inside the pouch and insert the other end of the string with another knot tied tight at the end of it. Pull the pouch tight and sew through the closure and string many times to make it very secure for safety reasons.

Enough of all this jabbering- time for some serious fishing:

You can see that my fishing poles can hold many (all) the fish- I used high powered magnets and I do suggest finding some for this project since I heard on many blogs that they had to make the fish small so the the magnet could "catch" only one fish!

 "Whew- after all this fishing we're parched! Time to stop for a little refreshment!"

Happy Fishing!

Amy

(and if you like it- pin it!)