Sew Much Fun: Pocket Frog and Toad plushies

Sew Much Fun: Pocket Frog and Toad plushies is coming to the John Gillum Branch on Thursday, September 3, from 4 PM to 5 PM. It's a sewing workshop where you'll learn to hand-sew felt plushies of Frog and Toad, the two characters from the classic children's books. The session is aimed at tweens aged 9 to 12, so it's a good fit for kids in that middle-school range who are ready to pick up a needle and thread.

The choice of characters isn't random. Frog and Toad are part of the Austin Public Library's 100th birthday celebrations, and the library picked them from among some of its favorite characters of the last century. It's a nice way to tie a hands-on craft to a milestone for the city's library system, and the result is a couple of small, handmade figures you can actually keep.

If you're not already familiar with the books, Frog and Toad are the unlikely best friends at the center of Arnold Lobel's stories—one optimistic and energetic, the other a bit more cautious and grumpy. They've been staples of children's shelves for decades, and here you get to make your own versions of them out of felt. Since it's a hand-sewing workshop, you'll be working with a needle and thread rather than a machine, which makes it a great introduction to the basics of sewing for anyone who's never tried it before.

The workshop is free and open to the public, so there's no cost to join in. It runs from 4 PM to 5 PM on Thursday, September 3, at the John Gillum Branch, located at 2505 Steck Ave.