Felt Flower Pin Test Round-Up

I have loved using felt recently and decided to knock out some of the felt flower tutorials that I was planning to pin-test. For the first one, I only have a picture of my results to show you because the tutorial was awesome and there was nothing I would change about it.

My daughter is wearing a lot more black now that it is Fall and I made two so she could wear them on pigtails once her hair gets longer! I thought these pom-pom flowers were just too cute. You can find the instructions here at Craft Snob.

My next flower was a little more complicated. I found this beautiful tutorial here on "How Joyful" and although I loved it, I could not get the pattern to open for me. Then I also saw how she wants you to buy a limited production license if you are going to sell something you made from her pattern. Something about that just didn't quite rub me the right way. Either sell your pattern or don't limit how people can use it if you put it out there for free. So, I decided to make my own pattern from her idea. I doubt I will ever sell any of these, but this way, if I do, I am covered. First, I drew a petal shape that I liked and then I cut it out and traced around it until I had a good looking flower shape. I tried to make my petal shape a little different than the original. We'll call this one a poinsettia!

To make a second, larger pattern, I retraced around the first one, adding about a 1/4 inch all around as I went and adjusting the middle accordingly.

I normally just pin my pattern to my felt/fabric, but in this case as it was a little more detailed, I traced it onto the felt instead. Be sure to trace onto the non-printed side.

After you have you pieces cut out, on the back side, stitch along the "v" in each petal. It will look like this when you are done:

Once you have your flowers sewn, it's time to glue them together. I like to use a small piece of felt as a base.  Pinch your flower and put your glue around the bottom edge. Then you can arrange it a little more how you like it once you stick it down.

I really liked how these turned out! I know I will be making more!

The final flower is a spin on the second one. I loved the 3-D petals so I decided to try a 5 petal rounded one. My husband is going to Nicaragua next week and I wanted to send a gift to one of the ladies I had met there. I found a nice dress shirt but I couldn't find any jewelry I liked so I made her a flower to match instead. I started as before by drawing a petal shape I liked and then cutting it out and re-tracing it into a full flower. Then I just repeated that on a smaller scale for my second pattern.

Here are all of the pieces used to make this flower. For the small black center flower I cut out five small individual petals and hand stitched them together into a circle.

I have been adding alligator clips and safety pins to the back of many of my flowers recently so that they can pull double duty.

I really like how the rounded shape of the flower picked up the more mod-esque vibe of the print on the shirt. I also picked up some matching nail polish to complete the gift. I hope she likes it!

Felt Frog Pin

I met a lady last night that liked frogs and uses one in her ministry so I thought I would take the opportunity to try making her one. Sometimes I don't need much of an excuse to make something. I started, as always by drawing a simple picture of a frog. I did a Google search for felt frog images to get an idea of what I wanted. Once I had my drawing, I broke it down into pattern pieces. I like to label them before I cut them out so I know which side is up and what goes where. This is really helpful later too if I decide to keep my pattern for future use.

Next, I gathered my materials and actually thought to take a picture of it all together.

Materials:
2 shades of green felt
Yellow felt for stomach and eyes
White felt for mouth (not pictured)
Black felt for backing
Scissors
Stick pins
Needle and matching or contrasting thread
Glue gun
Safety pin or pin back

Obvious first step would be to cut out your pieces. I used a needle and green thread to add details.

Next, begin gluing down your pieces in this order:

1. Eyes and belly to frog body

2. Arms slightly overlapping frog belly

3. Mouth covering top of arms and bottom of eyes

4. Lily pad to black felt

5. Frog to lily pad and black felt

Finally, trim off the excess black felt and glue your pin to the back.

Here's the finished pin, from inspiration to fruition!

Baking Bacon

We are at a missions house for about 5 days this week and went to the store to buy a few groceries last night. We found out that the Dida really likes bacon (right now we are trying to get her to gain weight so we are feeding her things that I might not feed a one year old other wise) and I was wanting to purchase the already cooked kind. I didn't want to spend the money on it though because you can get so much more raw for the same price, but I've never been good at cooking bacon, at least not without burning myself. The hubs, always resourceful, said that he would take on the task. We purchased the best looking cheap stuff that was a thick cut. He wanted to try it in the oven. Turns out to be my favorite method yet!

Here are his instructions:

1. Lay your bacon out on a cookie sheet as flat as you can - you may want to line the pan with foil

2. Set the oven to 350

3. Stick you bacon in to bake, he didn't wait for it to pre-heat

4. After about 20 minutes check for done-ness and bake more as needed

Turned out great and now I have pre-cooked bacon for the rest of our stay!

Update: The best way to reheat bacon cooked this way is to make a little packet out of foil and lay the bacon down in a single layer and pop it back in the oven. No mess and came out better than the first time!

Zebra Softie

Recently I have been playing with felt a lot (another cute softie post will be following this one as soon as it's recipient receives it) and I decided to make stuffed animals for the kids in my life this Christmas. I asked my sister-in-law what my two nieces favorite animals were and she told me kitties, puppies and one of them likes zebras! I had already tried my hand at a very simple cat but was rather intimidated at the idea of making a zebra. I'm not sure what scared me because it turned out not to be very hard at all. A trip to the Wal-mart fabric department made this project a lot easier. I bought a 1/4 yard of zebra print felt for $2 and still have plenty left over for other projects. The also sell zebra print felt sheets but you get more for your money if you buy it this way. To make your own zebra softie you will need:

Zebra felt - how much depends on how big you want to make it
Coordinating felt scraps or yarn for the mane, tail and ears- I used hot pink
Black felt for eyes, nose and feet
Scissors
Needle and coordinating thread
Paper and pencil
Hot glue gun - you can hand sew the whole thing but I prefer to glue some parts down

First, I made a pattern. I just drew a very simple horse shape cut it out. Then I pinned it to my felt and cut out two of them. Make sure to flip the pattern over so that you have zebra print on both sides.

To make the feet I pinned the pattern to the edge of the black felt and the cut it out so I had a little black half circle. I repeated this twice with both feet.

Then I cut out two very small circles for eyes and two very small ovals for nostrils out of the black felt. I also cut out two very small pink triangles for the ears. For the mane and tail I cut out pink rectangles. To make the mane I cut thick slits down one of the long sides, not going all the way through. For the tail I cut thinner slits almost the length of the rectangle. In the future I will use yarn as I think that will be a little stronger. Here are all of the pieces:

And here is how they are, hot glued down:

To attach the mane and tail I flipped one side over and hot glued them down as well. I rolled the tail piece and glued it before gluing it to the zebra.

All that was left was to stitch the two pieces together and stuff it! My daughter fell in love with this one so I decided to let her have it and make my niece a slightly bigger one with yarn for the mane and tail.

It would also be cute with a little pink bow tied around it's neck! What was your favorite stuffed animal as a kid?

Felt Leaf Barette

About.com Scrapbooking - Make your own leaves

Fireflies and Jelly Beans: Fall leaf table runner

I loved the pumpkin outfit that I made my daughter so much yesterday that I decided to keep the Fall ball rolling by making another hair clip out of felt leaves. I did some online searching and came up with the photos above. After looking around a little bit I started making my pattern. First I drew my leaf and acorn shapes and then once I had them how I liked them, I cut them out. The Canadian looking leaf in the top left was the hardest to get just right. I took me 3 drawings.

 Next, I pinned my patterns to my felt and started cutting. I cut 2 of everything. Then I added a little embroidery to a few of the leaves to make them pop.

I wanted a cluster of leaves and I started playing around with patterns. At first I thought I wanted something random but then I realized that something a little more symmetrical was the best way to go. Once I had the design I wanted, I placed them on the black felt and cut around them. The black felt was going to be my base. Then I started to hot glue the leaves down. Here is a step by step:

Next I carefully trimmed off all of the excess black fabric. Then, all that was left was to glue on a clip. I decided a barrette would be sturdier in this case. You could also add a pin back so you could wear it on your shirt. I don't like to add pin backs to clips that I intend for my daughter to wear, just in case they were to come open.

Here is my daughter modeling the finished product (it's a little blurry because it is hard to catch her being still!)

I also went outside and got a little artsy with my camera. Here is a shot of all 3 of the Fall bows I have made so far this year.

I designed the sunflower bow to be stacked with the pumpkin bow or worn alone. Simply slide the clip on the back of the pumpkin through the cuff on the front of the bow. Turn your clips in opposite directions so that they don't get too bulky on one side.

See how to make the Pumpkin here

DIY Pumkin Outfit

I love all of the pictures I see of little girls dressed up in holiday outfits like this one:

For sale on this site

I can't, however, imagine spending $57 on an outfit like this, or even having something that my daughter will only wear once! So I decided to come up with a different idea. My daughter has a very extensive wardrobe that consists almost entirely of hand-me-downs or clothes that were gifted to her. I try to work with what we have. Right now she has one white onesie and one cream one. I wanted to make her something cute like this, but I also wanted to make her a Christmas one and a pumpkin one. After thinking about it a little I asked my husband, "How would you attach something to clothes that you wanted to take off easily when you were done?", and he suggested that I hand sew it down lightly. Not sure why I didn't think of that simple solution myself. Here is how you can make a temporary Pumpkin decoration and matching hair bow yourself. 

For this project you will need:

Scrap Paper

Felt 

Stick Pin

Needle and contrasting thread

Scissors

Matching onesie or shirt

Hair Clip (if you want to make a matching hair bow)

Hot Glue Gun

First, I did a little searching and came up with these pictures on Pinterest:

I liked the colors from the first picture, the layering from the second picture and the leaf on the third picture. With that in mind, I started developing a pattern. I got some scrap paper and drew up my design. Then I cut it out and traced it again onto the paper.

I went back to my first piece and cut out the middle. This allowed me to get the two pieces I needed for my layers. I drew a leaf from the picture and cut it out as well. I also labeled the pattern pieces intermediately so that I would always know which side was up. Here is the completed pattern:

The next step was to cut out my felt. I like to use a stick pin to hold the pattern in place while I am cutting. I decided to make the middle piece dark yellow so that it would stand out more. I also cut out a small rectangle of brown for the stem.

Next, just hot glue it together! I also cut out the pieces for my matching hair clip so that I could glue them all at one time. For the hair clip I cut a base out of black felt to make it a little stronger.

The last step is to hand stitch your decoration to your shirt. I chose a contrasting yellow thread and just did a running stitch all the way around the outside edges.

Now, when Fall is over, I can just snip it off! If I am gentle with it, I can save it and sew it to another shirt next year! I plan to make a turkey for Thanksgiving and something else for Christmas all on the same onesie that can be re-used again next year. What is your favorite holiday to dress up for?