Upcycled Denim Tic Tac Toe Tutorial - A Noughts and Crosses Game

I've seen a few pictures of this game made from denim, and thought they looked really nice, so I decided to make one for myself with my denim scraps. I'm currently working on my 

Christmas Shouldn't Cost the Earth project 

and thought this would be a good stocking filler.

Here's how to make one of your very own.

You will need:

Denim scraps of 2 or 3 different shades or colours, and a little stuffing. I used jeans offcuts and stuffing from an old cushion, but you could also use cut up fabric scraps.

First cut your board.

Mine is 18 cm square (7"). I cut it using pinking shears to prevent too much fraying around the edges. You could sew a small hem around each edge instead.

Mark out the lines on the fabric for the board using a white pencil and ruler, then stitch along those lines using a tight zig zag on your machine.

And that's your board finished!

Make your game pieces

For each piece cut 2 squares of denim. Mine were 5 cm square (2").

Then cut the circles and squares from a lighter denim. For the crosses I cut two strips and just laid them across each other.  I did not use a template, but just cut all of these freehand.

You need 9 circles and 9 crosses.

Using a tight zig zag or the appliqué setting on your machine, stitch these circles and crosses, one to each square of denim you just cut.

Now take one square with a circle on and one with a cross on. Sandwich them together with the appliqué shapes facing outwards like this:

Stitch around 3 edges of each of these square pairs, then push a little stuffing inside each.

Then stitch the final edge closed, and trim all 4 edges with pinking shears.  You could also snip the edges after you stitch to create a ragged effect which looks really nice too but is a lot more work.

Repeat this for all 9 game pieces - and that's it, you're finished!

I decided to make a small drawstring bag to keep the game in - using this tutorial here. The pieces I cut for the bag sides were about 17 x 20 cm (6.75 x 8").

The game board and pieces fit nicely inside.

So now I have my very own travel set of Tic Tac Toe - or as we call it here in Australia - Noughts and Crosses.

It would make a great little gift.

For the free downloadable PDF version of this tutorial, click here.

If you liked this tutorial, why not check out some of my other free sewing tutorials. There are over 100 for making all kinds of things and for all levels of sewing abilities.

Go to My Free Sewing Tutorials page to see more.