Harry Potter themed birthday party

In three months I will be throwing my son's first birthday party and I decided on a Harry Potter themed party. It is quickly getting out of hand since I'm such a huge HP fan. I started working on the party favors pretty early (think November and the party is in June). I'm glad I did cause it helped me to save a lot of money and work at a pretty slow pace. I am going to break each party favor up into its own post so this is going to be a series of posts.

First up I made house scarves. I know a scarf is out of season for a June party, but they were the easiest and I figured kids would re-use a scarf before they would a tie.

I bought fleece on sale at Joann's and iron on patches online.

Then I cut the fleece into 5" wide strips making a 5" x 42" scarf. I recommend cutting the selvages off before cutting because they caused the fleece to bunch up on the end. Or maybe that was because I bought cheap fleece.

Then I cut tassels on the ends of the scarves. My tassels are 4" long and 1/2" wide.

If your fleece is like mine then there should be a fluffier side and a not-as-fluffy side. I ironed my patches on the not-as-fluffy side by putting the patch face down (with the backing facing up) and laying the scarf on top of it. I used the lines on my ironing board to make sure the patch was centered on the scarf and I positioned the patch approx. 10" from the end. To get this measurement I put on a scarf and measured when the patch would look best.

When ironing onto fleece you can't put the iron directly onto the fleece. Get a thick cotton fabric or shirt to put on top of the fleece. If you put the iron directly onto the fleece then you will mess it up. Make sure your iron is on a steam setting then run it over the patch area for about 15-20 seconds while you have a good amount of steam coming out of the iron.

And voila!