Mini Cakes: A Sewing Celebration

My first foray into serious hand sewing (aside from cross stitch) occurred when I happened upon a variety of mini cake kits at my local dollar store. It looked like a fun activity to provide some distraction; the directions were simple & complex, and the materials were cheap … but I was still hooked on the possibilities.

In honour of the start of a new year and in the case of The Felt Store, 8 successful ones, we’re making a mini cake!

Taking inspiration from the original kits, the material that was included was thin and poorly made; so working with the awesome selection of 100% Wool Felt The Felt Store offers was a creative dream for this project.

I went with Strawberries as the theme. It speaks to the promise of Spring and new beginnings.

Materials

• Mini Cake Pattern
• Cake Decoration Pattern
• 3mm Designer Earth Wool White
• 100% Wool Craft Felt By Yard 1.2mm
  • Red
  • Shocking Pink
  • Pink
  • Petal
  • Natural
  • Cream
  • Brown
  • Green
  • Pine
• Coloured cotton embroidery floss
• Sewing needle
• Sewing straight pins
• Scissors
• Cardboard/box-board

I like to cut and sew all the cake decorations first, it helps to inspire me and they take the most amount of time to set up.

Assembly goes faster and you can play with planning out the top of the cake. You can always cut more (creams and icings) later if you need to.

I always end up making more décor than I need and that leads to making more cakes.

After making all the decorations we can start the assembly.

If you have the thicker felt on hand, cut out the base, top and sides of the cake from it. Only have thinner felt? You will also want to cut the same from a cereal box board.

You could also use fusible interfacing to stiffen the felt so that it has support.

I sewed the sides of the cake together. Press open with your fingers. Take the cookie base and sew it down to the bottom edge of the cake.

I choose to make the seams of my cake offset so that the cake, icing, and cookie layer edges do not line up in the same area.

Pin the strawberry slices around the cake, I used 6 and evenly spaced them around the outside.

Next, sew the icing layer down. I moved mine around to cover some strawberries & leave others uncovered.

Let’s have some fun, a little cake fashion show …

Play around to get the arrangement of fruit and cream how you like it.

This is the easiest way I have found to assemble the cake; sew down your décor elements onto the top Icing cake layer. If you sew on the icing and then add the décor, the cake sides get in the way. If you decide to use a glue gun, it would be OK to sew the top on first.

I had a selection of pink pearl glass beads, a few make the cake ‘POP’!

Sew the Cake top to the main cake body.

Time to stuff!

Turn the cake upside down and cradle it in your hand.

I added a cereal box board circle first, to give the top of the cake more stability.

Add your stuffing of choice, and pack it firmly.

Start sewing on the bottom cookie layer, I added another box board circle for stability, and more stuffing as I closed the hole.

You can create a personalized cookie message and tuck it into the design on top.

I hope that 2023 is the best one yet for you. Trust in yourself and pursue your wildest ambitions and realize all your goals while experiencing unending joy, as a new year brings abundant opportunities.