Egghead Learns to Sew, Part VI

Today I start applying machine-sewing to the material I intend to work with, namely, felt! This involves learning about types of thread, needle sizes, and a few key machine settings.

What to Do With Scraps of Felt, Part VIII: Make a Mobile

Today's How-To is an expansion of my What to Do With Scraps of Felt Part VII: Make a Festive Garland. It starts with strands of felt shapes weighted by jingle bells and attaches them to a simple frame to create a mobile.

What to Do With Scraps of Felt, Part VII: Make a Festive Garland

I confess: I have a thing for dangly art. I like making it, and I like looking at it. I like the variously gentle and energetic movement in the free-hanging kind, and I like the potential variability of the of the attached-to-something-but-not stationary kind.

In terms of design elements, I also like simple shapes and bold colors. These proclivities lend themselves well to the scraps-of-felt project---number seven in the series, by the by---that I present to you today. I think it's kind of fun and I hope you do too. Yay!

Materials

• Scraps of felt
• Straight pins
• Scissors
• Glue
• Four-pound fishing line
• A large jingle bell or other decorative doo-dad with a little weight to it (optional)

Steps

Cut a length of fishing line and tie a loop in one end. With a small piece of tape (fold one end over sticky sides together aid removal) secure that end to a table or the like.

Cut shapes from scraps of felt. I like to stack shapes on top of each other for a dimensional look so I cut several different sizes of shapes. 

Regardless of whether you decide to stack or not, start by cutting shapes of the same size to sandwich the fishing line between. Pin two pieces of felt together with their back (less fuzzy) sides facing each other and snip away.

Separate your pieces. Apply a line of glue to the back side of one of the shapes and align it with the fishing line. Set the line in the glue. Affix the other shape, fuzzy side up, to the first shape. Gently press together. 

Glue smaller shapes to the base shapes until you're happy with the result. Do this to both sides or just on one, depending on how you intend to display the result (if against the wall, one side; if free-hanging, both sides).

Display suggestions and tips: If you're going to hang your work vertically, say, in a doorway, tie a jingle bell or similarly weighted object to the loose end to stabilize it a bit. 

If you're going to hang your work horizontally, more akin to a garland, skip the jingle bell in favor of another loop. 

And there you go---a festive garland for everyday or party use. Enjoy!

Until next time,

Linda

Purty Bird

Warm Fuzzy Valentine

Here's a quick little Valentine's decoration with a twist: It holds chocolate!

Materials

1. Felt
2. Fabric glue
3. Needle and thread
4. Embroidery floss
5. Pins
6. Scissors
7. Ribbon
8. Chocolate!

Steps

Cut heart shapes out of felt. I cut two sizes, one for the front sides of the pockets that will hold the chocolate, to decorate the pockets with. Glue (or sew, if you prefer) the smaller decorative hearts to the larger (pocket) hearts (you can also do this second step later; I just happened to do it at this point).

Pin large hearts onto another piece of felt and cut around it to create the back sides of the pockets.

Set front sides of pockets aside and lay the back sides out in a line. 

Measure out a piece of ribbon and position lay it on top of your row of pocket-backs. Pin in place

Sew (or glue, if you prefer) the ribbon to the pocket-backs.

Pin the front sides of the pockets to their corresponding backs. Using embroidery floss, sew most of the way around, leaving the top open (pic below is out of sequence).

Fill the pockets with chocolate and hang (use push-pins, magnets, or sew a ring to the top of the ribbon -- I used magnets to attach my chocolate-pocket heart garland to a lamp).

Happy Valentine's Day!

Linda
Purty Bird

What to Do with Scraps of Felt, Part IV: Make Finger Puppets!

Here's a quick and easy project using scraps of felt that you can do just about anywhere. I started the one I'm about to document while selling my wares at the Hell's Kitchen Flea Market this past weekend, for instance.

Now, before I start I just want to say that there are some really nicely-made finger puppets out there (check out this post by NewNew blogger, Karina, for a great tutorial), and these ones I made aren't them. No. Mine are, shall we say, a bit rough around the edges? But they're fun and easy and that's at least half the point.

Materials

All you need is felt pieces long and wide enough to cover your (or someone else's, say, a child's) finger, plus some smaller bits for details; embroidery floss or thread; a needle or two large enough to accommodate said embroidery floss or thread; pins to hold things together while you sew, and perhaps a bit of fabric glue and fabric paint if you don't want to sew every little detail.

The piece of felt I started with.

Steps

First, Find yourself a piece of felt as described above and wrap it around your finger. Pin the ends together where they overlap, making a tube.

Next, sew up the open side and top of your tube.

Snip off the pointy edges if you like, and begin adding details. I started with a pair of eyes and a pair of pants. I sewed the pants to the bottom of the tube and let the legs extend beyond it. For fun I used a contrasting color of embroidery floss and continued stitching beyond the point where they attached to the felt.

First details: Eyes and pants.

Back at home from the market, I added a hat. I did the same as with the pants and stitched all the way around the perimeter of the hat with a contrasting color of embroidery floss.

Then I stitched my little hat-and-pants-wearing guy a mouth and glued him on a nose.

I finished with a couple of dabs of fabric paint for eyeballs. And my first-ever, rough but cute in an ugly sort of way finger puppet was complete!

But, all the while I was making my first-ever finger puppet I was wondering if I was doing it the best way, starting with an already sewn-up tube instead of a flat piece of felt. So, being constitutionally unable to leave well-enough a lone, I made a second-ever finger puppet in this alternative way. Feeling less restricted in terms of sewing on the details, I got a bit ambitious and gave this second finger puppet arms.

Second puppet, different method, different details.

Although the sewing-on of details was certainly easier, it was harder to tell where to put them. I used the eyes to as a point of reference, remembering that the area I had to work with was small. Even so, the arms ended up way on the sides of the tube, pretty much out of view.

Where'd the arms go?

It was easy enough to reposition them, but only by so much. And I got the right arm wrong again.

Better, but still not quite right.

So even though it was easier to sew on the details using the second method, I'd go with the first method and close the open side and top of the felt first. It's easy enough to hide the ends of your thread/embroidery floss in-between where you sew the sides of the felt together.

Hiding a knot in-between the sewn-together sides of the felt tube.

In short, keep it simple and have fun!

Until next time --

Linda

PurtyBird

What to Do with Scraps of Felt, Part III: Make a Cute Bracelet

This one is super-easy and perfect for Spring (which I trust will arrive any day now). Keep it simple and unrestrained or bump it up a notch with a few extra steps for a more sophisticated look.

Materials

• Scraps of felt cut up into squares, rectangles, triangles, circles, or what-have-you
• Elastic stringing material such as Stretch Magic or Elonga; I used 5 mm but 7 mm would also probably work, depending on the size of your felt bits
• Scissors
• Needle
• Beads (optional)
• Fabric glue (optional)
• Thread (optional)

Steps

Decide whether you want a more or less restrained final piece. If you go the less restrained route, simply thread your needle with about one-and-a-half to two-times the amount of stringing material you need to go around your wist, tie a knot in one end, and begin stringing the bits of felt onto it. When you've got enough to go around your wrist, pull the knotted end of the stringing material away from the felt so that you have enough loose material on either end to make a knot (I used a modified square knot; click on the Elonga link above for a great illustration). Wear it as-is, or trim away some of the shagginess with a scissor.

If you want a slightly more restrained (but no less festive)-looking final product, select bits of felt that are of roughly equal size and alternate their colors. Add some beads at regular intervals for even more variation. I used felted beads in the sample above but most 7-10 mm glass, stone or plastic beads would also work well. Just be sure the hole is large and smooth enough to fit your stringing material without shredding it.

Finally, if you're feeling really ambitious, or if you want an even more polished final product, you can stack your bits of felt in different color combinations and either glue or sew them together to make your own beads. String them alone or with a few accent beads in-between.

Easy-breezy Springtime fun, both to make and to wear!

Until next time -

Enjoy!

Linda

PurtyBird

What to do with Scraps of Felt, Part I: Make a Snazzy Brooch

I work with felt a lot, and being my mother's daughter, I save the scraps. Almost every scrap. Consequently, I have bags and bags of scraps that I've been trying to figure out how I might use creatively. One thing I came up with, quite by accident while sewing other things this past weekend, is to make brooches. I'm still experimenting a little with technique, so the following how-to will include a a couple of different ones, broadly identified as "glue" and "sew."

Materials

You will need:

• Scraps of felt
• Needle and thread (or embroidery floss---I've got lots of scraps of that, too)
• Scissors
• Fabric glue
• Pin-backs

Steps

Find a piece of felt big enough to cut into two equal pieces of the size brooch you want. These will serve as the front and back of your brooch. Lay the two pieces out with the "right" (fuzzier-softer) side facing up. Pick one to use as the front side of the brooch.

Decorate this base piece of felt with additional pieces of felt. Maybe throw on a few beads is you have them. Have fun! One of the fun things about using felt for this is the ability to layer it to dimensional effect. The more layers of felt (and whatever else you put on), the more dimension your brooch will have.

For these first few brooches I just used different sizes, shapes and colors of felt. In the first brooch (below), I glued the shapes on, and in the second one I sewed them.

If you're sewing your decorative bits, you might try using contrasting colors of thread or embroidery floss for additional pizzaz.

If you're gluing your decorative bits, be careful not to press them onto the base piece with too much pressure at first. Felt is porous so the wet glue will seep through and dampen the fuzzy-softness of the surface. As the glue dries you can give them another pat or two to ensure they stick well.

Now for the back side of the brooch. If you're sewing, position an open pin back in the center of the back piece of felt. Hold onto it tightly and sew. The kind of pin-back I used has holes on it like a button, and I sewed it like a button, pulling the thread in-between the holes down the length of the pin-back. I also sewed around each hole on either end of the pin-back. I've found that with this kind of pin-back, you can't sew it on too securely. If it's not firmly affixed to the felt, it's hard to open and close the pin. (If you're gluing, I suggest putting the pin-back on last, after the following step.)

Now, either sew or glue the front and back sides of the brooch together. If you're sewing, you might still want to squirt a bit of glue in-between the sides (first photo below), both to give the brooch some structure, and to keep it together in case your stitches come undone. It would stink to lose the front of your brooch and be left wearing just the back, especially after all that dimensional layering!

If you're using the "glue" method, now attach the pin-back. Squirt a line of glue onto the back of the brooch and set the pin-back in it.

Allow to dry, affix to a sweater, hat, bag, or what-have-you, and ta-da! A neat accessory---and a few pieces of scrap felt used up!

Until next time --

Linda

PurtyBird