Get Your Craft On! Chalkboard/Dry Erase Art Roll Tutorial.

My youngest, doodling away!

Does an idea ever take hold of you, and you can't do anything but work on that idea until it was finished? 


That happened to me the other day. 


While on my way home from school, I was thinking about this stash of chalkboard fabric I bought on sale at JoAnn's a while ago, when all of their "utility fabric" was 25% off. 


I have been wanting to make my kids some type of a chalk board mat to use around the house, but just had not felt inspired yet.  Then I started thinking about some of the other "utilitarian"  fabrics in my stash, mostly muslin, vinyl and the like.


Then I had an idea!!! (Cue light bulb turning on.)



What if I made a chalk board mat for my kids using the chalkboard fabric on one side, and made a fun dry erase mat on the other side by using muslin with a layer of vinyl on top?  So, as soon as I got home I grabbed a dry erase marker to see if it would work on vinyl, and if it would come off easily .... and what do you know, it did! (update: do not let the dry erase marker sit on the vinyl over night, it can stain the vinyl slightly).


So an idea was born ... a fun mat that the kids can use around the house, and can roll up and take on the go.  One side a chalk board thanks to the chalk cloth, the other side a dry-erase board thanks to a layer of muslin topped with vinyl.  I then decided it would be fun if the "dry erase" side looked like paper .... then I personalized it with hand embroidery .... and more ideas came forth, but I wanted to keep it simple and get this tutorial up for you all ASAP!


So here you go, a tutorial whipped up just for you.  I just HAD to get this done, and written up ASAP, so please, I hope you do not mind the awful photos.  First of all, I don't have a fancy camera, and plus it has been so overcast here lately that I could not get any good light ... oh well, I am sure you won't mind, right?

UPDATE: Want more information on chalk cloth ... check out my post HERE.

Supplies Needed:


Utility Muslin (or other light colored fabric such as Kona Cotton)


Chalkboard fabric (usually by the "utility fabric", you can also find it online by running a google search)

This is the vinyl I used, you can find it at Wal-Mart.

Vinyl (lighter weight, “double polished” type)


½ inch  Double fold bias tape


Blue and Red sewing machine thread

3 x pieces of ¼ inch wide elastic


70/10 and 90/14 universal sewing machine needles


Metal-free elastic ponytail holder (to use as a closure)

Sewing machine, notions

Optional Supplies: rotary cutter, self-healing mat, clear ruler, walking foot, DMC embroidery floss, water-soluble marker, hand embroidery needle.

(For my international friends: 1 inch = 2.54 cm)

Cutting your fabric and elastic:


Preface: When I make stuff for my kids, I gotta admit I usually choose speed over precise-ness (is that a word?). So, for cutting my pieces I did this … I went and grabbed an old place mat and set it on top of the fabric I was going to cut and simply used the place mat as my pattern piece. I cut around ¼ inch  around the place mat. The size you choose really is up to you, you could make it smaller or larger, which is why I did not list a fabric amount under the supplies section.

In case you are wondering, the size of my place mat is about 13.5 x 18.5 inches.

So, cut all 3 of your "fabrics" … the muslin, the chalkboard fabric, the vinyl all using the method described above.

For the elastic, I used ¼ inch wide elastic – probably any size would work, but that is what I had on hand. I cut 3 pieces that were each 2 ¼ inches long. This length works well for the regular sized dry erase markers (not the “fat” ones), and the skinny pieces of chalk (not the sidewalk chalk). You can make your pieces of elastic longer if you want to store a wider item.


Also, if you want some type of a permanent closure for this roll, now would be a good time to cut your ribbon, or twill tape, or whatever you want to use. I just put a metal-free pony tail holder around the whole deal and called it a day (yeah, I am lazy like that some times).

A pony tail holder works well to roll this mat up -- it's easy, and best of all  my kids like the mat rolled up in this fashion because it reminds them of a "pirate's treasure map". 

Turn your muslin into “paper”:

Okay, so this is an optional step.   I wanted to mimic the paper that they use in elementary school that has an open area on top to draw a picture, and lines underneath to write a sentence about what your picture is about.  

You could stitch up the whole piece of fabric to make it look like one big sheet of lined paper, or not stitch it at all and just say it is a blank piece of paper … it is up to you. You could use colored fabric and call it construction paper, you could embroider it with anything you like and call it "stationary", the options here really are endless.

So, all I did was use a straight stitch (and my 70/10 needle) and just sewed on some parallel lines.  I used the side of my presser foot as a guide.

Sew on as many straight lines as you want using your sewing machine and blue thread.  Don't worry about them being perfect, just try and keep them parallel. You could also embroider these lines on by hand if you are ambitious like that. 

I covered about half of the fabric, once I was finished with that, I changed to red thread, and made one red line down the side.  I just eyeballed it, but  about 1 ½ inches from the side is good to aim for. 

Looks like paper doesn't it?  If you really want to make this look like loose leaf lined paper you could hand embroider on some small circles in the margin in black or grey where the holes in the paper would be. 

Hand Embroidery – Optional:

Another optional step here.  Since my kids like to fight over everything, it is imperative that their name be on everything … plus I think it is kinda cute.  I wrote “By: Ryan” using a water soluble marker in the lower right hand corner, and then using a 3 ply back stitch in DMC 310 (black) stitched over my writing.

Any phrase would work well here, "My thoughts",  "My drawings", etc. 

At this point I straightened the fabric using a rotary cutter and ruler, because all of the stitched lines can distort the fabric a bit.

Baste it all together:

First, lay your chalkboard fabric WS up on a flat surface.  Next put your muslin “paper” RS up on top of the chalkboard fabric.  Last, place your vinyl on top. I don’t know that the vinyl has a RS or a WS because it is “polished” on both sides, but the most important thing is to put the side with the paper facing up.

Clip or pin your fabrics together, just remember that if you use pins that the holes will show unless you keep your holes within the seam that will be covered by the bias tape. 

Now, switch to that 90/14 needle.  If you have a walking foot, this would probably be a good place to use it, if not that is okay too, I did not use one… I just had to do some squaring up when I was done due to the fabric shifting a bit here and there. 

  

Using a longer stitch length (3.5), baste the 3 layers together using a ¼ inch seam.

A tip here: sew with the paper side facing up, otherwise the feed dogs will tear the paper and the vinyl will stick to your machine. 

If your pieces shifted around,   go ahead and  square up your piece again  using a rotary cutter, mat and ruler.

At this point I went back and basted on the pieces of elastic using a 1/8 inch seam, with the raw edges of the elastic lined up with the raw edges of the fabric .  I put one piece of elastic on the dry-erase side, and 2 pieces of elastic on the chalk side.

I put 2 pieces of elastic on the chalkboard side to hold 2 small pieces of chalk, and one piece of elastic on the dry-erase side to hold one dry erase marker, because the dry erase markers are usually quite a bit longer than chalk -- unless you can find the mini ones. 

If you would like to attach some type of a permanent closure (in lieu of my lazy pony tail holder method), then go ahead and cut your material (ribbon, twill tape, whatever ..) to the length of your choice, and baste it onto your fabric using a 1/8 inch seam. 

Next, round out the corners by tracing a round object such as a bowl or jar lid, and cutting along your line. You do not have to do this, but I loathe creating mitered corners with bias tape, so for me it is just easier to avoid them all together.  (Sorry I did not get a photo for this step).

UPDATE: Need a template to trace to round your corners?  Download a free all purpose corner rounding template HERE.

For the final step in sewing, I encased all of the raw edges with the double fold bias tape, sewed the bias tape on (going through all of the layers, and both sides of the bias tape) using a  ¼ inch seam.  If you do not know how to use bias tape, or how to sew it on, there is a great tutorial here., I used what the tutorial would refer to as "the cheater way" of sewing on the bias tape on for this project.

 A side note --- when I did this step the paper was still on top of the vinyl to prevent sticking, and yes, I know that when I stitched on the bias tape that some of the paper became encased within the bias tape.  This did not bother me. Don't let it bother you either.  

Tear the paper off of the vinyl. The mat is done. 

The very last step is to "prime" the chalkboard fabric.  All you need to do is take a piece of chalk, lay it on it's side and rub chalk over the entire piece of chalkboard fabric -- first horizontally, then vertically, wipe the chalk off and repeat again one or two more times.

Once you are done, post a picture to the split stitch flickr pool because I would love to see what you come up with!

If you get stuck or have questions, feel free to drop me an email: thesplitstitch (at) live (dot) com. 

Hugs,  Sara  :)

Dry erase side ... this says "I love you". 

Fine print:  If you are another blog wanting to do a blog post about this tutorial, please feel free to use whatever you would like with a link back to this post.  For those making items from this post, please do not copy/repost this tutorial and claim it as your own, or sell it.  This tutorial is for personal use only.  If you would like to sell items made from this tutorial, please contact me, and you can purchase a .pdf version of this tutorial with the permission to sell items made from this tutorial.  Copyright Sara Chung 2011.  All rights reserved.