sewing & craft projects

My daughter is the unfortunate owner of very poor eyesight and also a squint, both are corrected by wearing glasses, which she has done, with very little complaining, since the age of 18 months old. In addition to all this, we had to exercise her weaker eye (the left one), with 2 hours of patching a day. The sticky patches the hospital gave us were, to be honest, useless, and kept peeling off, so back in 2008, I designed and made an eyepatch for her to use and also posted a 'how to' on my old craft blog, it quickly became one of the most popular projects I ever posted!

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1. Cut the patch template, making the 3 slits as indicated. Fold the end over, as below, and sew down both seems (I have done this on the machine, but you could stitch it by hand), trim off the excess felt. Pin together the 2 edges of the center slit, trapping the folded over arm holder loop in between, and sew. Trim off any excess felt from this inner seam and turn the patch the right way round. Try it on the glasses for size, and also trim the outside edges if needed (probably a good idea at this stage to get the person who will be wearing the patch to try it on to check the fit)

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2. Pin the lense sleeve into position, and sew on with random straight stitches along both the top and the bottom edges, leaving both side open for the glasses frame to slip through. Repeat the basic patch shape in black felt, remember to sew it the reverse way round this time, as the 2 need to fit together with all seams on the inside. Place the black inner patch, and the outer patch together and trim any excess off the black so they both match and blanket stitch both pieces together, all the way round the edge.

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3. Attach the flower decoration using the button by sewing onto the lense sleeve, be careful not to sew it on through the whole patch, and just to the sleeve, other wise it will block the gap the glasses frame is to slip through. Place the patch on the glasses, and using some sharp scissors, poke a small hole through the whole patch, for the nose pad to slot through.

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The patch can be used on either the left or the right side of the glasses simply by turning it upside down, Lucy's goes on the right, covering up her good eye, so she is forced to use her left one. This is the girly version, you could easily make a boy's version in different colours and decorate it with a star sheriff's badge, or a bug shape. The depth of the lense sleeve may need adjusting to allow for a large glasses frame, test it out for size before sewing.