June 30th 2015 - Making an Indoor campfire

June 30th 2015 - Making an Indoor campfire

We are hoping to run a day camp during the summer holidays for St John Ambulance, but as it will be in a building we can't have a real fire.  So whilst I was looking for camp ideas over the past few weeks I found this very basic indoor campfire.  Although it would work I set about how I could make a better one.

I knew I had brown curtains (think 1970's and your on the right lines) in the airing cupboard that had previously been used on the doors (they are now nice teal colour that matches walls).  So I went and got 1 and started cutting rectangles (as you do) without a template or plan or exactly what I was doing.  I then stitched them as tubes and at 1 end, stuffed them with an old pillow and made logs and twigs.  And I came up with these:

 They will make the twigs and logs for my campfire.

I had some red organza in  my material box left over from last years pirate party and thought I could use i as part of the flames, but would need yellow and orange as well - I ordered some chair ribbons like you have at weddings in 2 shades of orange and a bright yellow.  I was now ready to make my flames!  The next pic shows the oranges and yellow but not red:

The chair ribbons were a nice width to use as flames and the bonus was the edges had been hemmed so they were less likely to fray.  I cut across the organza in about 2.5-3" pieces, 1 of each of the 4 colours:

I stitched them together with the red at bottom, dark orange next, light orange and then yellow at top and cut the yellow to look like flames.  See pic below:

Once they were stitched together and the flame shape cut I started to add thin wire to them so that the flames would stay upright rather than just fall over.  I stitched the bottom of the red to the thinner of the logs/twigs I had made - 2 per log 1 each side.  All of the flames are different as they haven't been measured i've just cut and stitched and the same with the yellow flame shapes i've just cut.  But I think this adds to the effect.  Here is 1 log with flames on it:

I've not quite finished it all, but I think it looks really good and i'm pleased with how its turned out.  I have fake t-light candles (battery operated) that are an orange colour and flicker, i'm looking for some white flickering ones as well and these are all going amongst the logs so it looks like the fire is flickering.