sewing with felt Archives

Felt Easter Egg Decorations

March 21, 2014 by Merry Leave a Comment

A year ago my girls spent a happy afternoon making these banners to decorate the house for Easter – such is life with a small person in the house, I’ve only just got round to blogging them.

The template for the eggs was just a Hama Bead Egg board, something we can always find in the house! They drew round them on to felt in various colours and spent a happy day embellishing them with additional pieces of felt (draw some extra eggs, cut them out and then cut them up to make them fit neatly if you want stripes etc), buttons, beads, ribbon and ric-rac gleaned from our haberdashery shop at SimpleCraftShop

Once made, we glued them on to long lengths of ribbon and hung them on doors and curtain rails for Easter. While it is fair to say their technique might needs some work (ragged edges etc probably won’t make them a runaway Pinterest hit!) they learned loads about colour, design, embellishing, sewing, patience and neatness along the way.

It’s fair to.

Firework Decorations in Felt.

November 5, 2012 by Merry Leave a Comment

One last bonfire night craft to finish off the firework season. My girls and I all had fun making these felt fireworks today with a mixture of coloured felt and seed beads. I had an idea in my head to make them double sided and then make a mobile; I think I still will but these ended up being lovely little sewing projects. Josie, Amelie and I all made simple ones but naturally Maddy really went to town and her version is a triumph!

These are really easy; we made some shape templates using Microsoft Word and then cut out explosions and tails for our fireworks in coloured felt. Then we cut out a rough black shape for them to be pinned to and threaded up a needle in a complimenting embroidery thread colour. Each bead is threaded on to the needle as it comes through from the back and then we stitched back down into almost the same spot. The result is that you can hardly see the thread and there is a lovely sparkle from them. Maddy used really tiny beads and loads of them, which made it looked positively jeweled!

Once all the beads were on and the thread tied off, I trimmed the black to make it fit more closely to the coloured shapes. Maddy did hers really close, which looks better I think. All that is left to do is stitch on a hanging loop and then glue another piece of black to the back to hide the stitches and then these will make lovely firework night decorations for Josie, our November 5th baby, for a long time to come!

Hand Sewn Butterfly & Flower Felt Picture

September 4, 2012 by Merry Leave a Comment

Summer is nearly over and all those crafts are nearly ready to be put to bed for another year…. flowers, butterflies, rainbows and blossoming trees will soon give way to harvest, russet leaves, Halloween and fireworks. Even the glimmer of snow and Christmas doesn’t seem so very far away. I’ve got a few more pretties that we made this year still up my sleeve though and wanted to show the picture our summer header came from. It’s part of a set I’m making for the wall of our new baby boy when he moves into his own room, the first being the tree picture this site started with.

I’ve got a real soft spot for this sort of folky and simple hand stitched picture, particularly as it copes so well with a cheaty bit of gluing to keep it quick and easy. Blanket stitch (ooh, some interesting varieties there!) and back stitch or simple long stitches add detail to felt without having to be too slavishly careful and felt is very forgiving when being cut and shaped (along with being cheap!) so a few mistakes won’t matter.

Without being too prescriptive, since creativity is key rather than following a slavish pattern, cut out some daisy petal shapes and a circle, which I added long stitch detail to to give it some interest. Add some wiggly leaves or grass stems and glue them all into place. The butterfly is blanket stitched (from a template I will be providing here shortly) and the bottom is cut from a dark piece of felt the same size as the blue background and given a wiggly edge and some back stitched detail for interest. I love buttons, so sticking those on as flowers and butterfly pattern worked really well. If you are doing this with a child, it is a great opportunity to explore symmetry too. Once it is all glue together, it will look great inside a picture frame and popped up on a wall.

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