Dinosaur Memory Matching Game

I got the idea for this dinosaur memory matching game from a Facebook post.

 I'd made one of my grand-daughters a playsuit using this great fabric, and I had only scraps left. There were 9 different dinosaurs on the fabric, and there were fortunately enough scraps for me to be able to cut out two of each dinosaur.

To find out how I made the matching dinosaur game, read on.

I found this post on Facebook from Dianne McKenzie, and it seemed a really nice idea. 

The plan was to cut round each dinosaur and attach them like appliques to pieces of felt. (Each piece of felt measured 2 1/2" by 4" - just slightly more in each dimension than the maximum length and height of each one.) As you'll see, I left a bit of a margin round each one - from experience, attaching appliques as I do with a zigzag stitch is much easier if you don't have tiny narrow bits to sew.

I then needed a backing, because the applique stitching would otherwise show on the wrong side and give the game away. I had just under half a metre of this polycotton dinosaur print (below) which I had no other use for, so I cut rectangles about half an inch longer and wider than the felt pieces.

This was a fraying kind of fabric, so I turned a single hem on each side to make these rectangles the same size as the felt. I did this by making a little paper template the same size as the felt, so I could iron the hems.

I also had just enough spare of this fabric to be able to make a small drawstring bag to keep all the pieces in. Here are all my bits, ready to sew. 

Then I clipped each felt piece to a backing piece (trying to keep the backing pieces all the same way up).

I did a losoe zigzag all the way round the outside (using a green thread on the spool, and a light gray, like the backing fabric, in the bobbin).

The bag was a very simple drawstring bag.I had to add a piece of dark green fabric to the bottom or my bag would have been too short.

Here are the pieces with the bag - they just fit nicely.

And the game is ready to play! You know this game. You lay out the pieces randomly, with the pictures to be matched face down .....

Then the players take it in turns to turn over two pieces, so everyone can see the pictures. If they get a match, they win those pieces and take them out. Oops - no match here!

And the one that wins most pairs is the winner. With 9 possible pairs, there has to be a winner with 2 players.

Of course, you don't have to use dinosaurs for this - I just liked these. With a bigger variety of pictures, you could have more pieces, but this set was just something to amuse my young grand-daughters, so I was happy that this seemed about the right number for them.