Scrappy Hobby Horse

Do you have piles of felt scraps floating around? Felt food, hair clips, fancy flowers, and a myriad of other felt crafting fun can leave you with quite a heap of felt bits floating around. Or, if you can’t get enough scraps, like me, you might purchase a big old box of scraps from some felt supplier. These scraps can come in handy, but I’ve found them hard to use in bulk, until now. I decided to try piecing some fabric together out of all the scraps. After I got about a third of a yard worth, I decided it was time to make something. Of all the different projects I had in mind for this lovely patchwork fabric, I decided a felt hobby horse was most appropriate, because it’s usually made of re-purposed materials (most commonly a sock, but you get the idea).

I drafted my own pattern, fully stuffed muslin and all, and then with a few alterations, I stitched up this guy. My favorite part is the mane. It may look involved, but stitching the mane was almost the easiest part (besides attaching the button eyes, of course).

It’s stuffed firm with scrap wool (i.e., wool that is too short, scratchy or icky to use for anything else). 

Did I mention my little girl is obsessed with horses? She’s already completely smitten, and I think this may be the start of a beautiful scrappy friendship.

This is another project that I think deserves a tutorial, though it might take me a little while to get around to it. Busy, busy, busy. But life is good.

Have a great day.

Dolls for Christmas

This is my very first finished project of 2013. Never mind that I started it way back last year. I really wanted to make some dolls for my girls for Christmas. Last Christmas they got a some dolls from their abuela that they loved to pieces, literally. Like, the legs fell off of one, and the head fell off of the other. I wish I was kidding. And after watching my poor baby walking around cuddling, cooing, and shooshing a headless doll for a couple months, I decided I needed to take some action. So I made these (hopefully) sturdier dolls.

Now, this could have been a simple project. There are tons and tons and tons of thorough tutorials, books, and patterns for beautiful dolls out there. I even took advantage of the the wonderful public library system to check out some books on doll making techniques. But when it came down to it, I decided that I wanted to make my own pattern for my doll. And I wanted to stuff it with wool. And I wanted to do some of that cool, Waldorf-doll style hair. Like I said, this could have been a simple project. 

But as my husband often reminds me, if it isn’t difficult, I won’t do it. Sometimes I think he’s right. So, I used some of the very, very helpful information on one of my favorite blogs, While She Naps, to draft a basic doll pattern. And then another one. And then a third one. After three prototypes (thankfully done in muslin) I decided I’d had enough and would have to go with it. If I ever make more dolls, I’ll definitely want to refine it a bit. It was a great learning experience, though.

And, of course, I decided to purchase a raw wool fleece from ebay to stuff the dolls with. Hmm, I think I’ll just breeze through this whole phase of the doll preparation phase, but lets just say there was so much washing, and culling plant and fecal matter from the fleece, and then drying, and then more sorting, and then combing/fluffing. Bottom line, buying prepared wool is probably worth the extra cost.

After assembling the doll bodies, I had to decide on the faces. Several sketches were thrown out before I decided to kind of wing it as I stitched. I fairly well like how the faces came out. I did the pink lip face first, then the smile face. I had intended to go back and redo the pink lips as a smile, but my four-year-old saw the pink lip doll and wouldn’t let me change it.

When it came to the clothes, I did a very simple dress, but I got a little fancy with the decorative stitching on the hem. First time, and it felt good.

For the hair, I used some lovely organic cotton yarn which is super soft, but a little fragile, so I had to tell my girls not to try combing the dolls hair. They were a little disappointed with that, but they like having me do braids and other hairstyles on their dolls (since they won’t let me do it on them).

Oh, and I stitched on a pair of underwear for both dolls, so there wouldn’t be any doll indecency should they choose to climb a tree or swing on the swings.

So far the working names are Tully and Sally, but we’ll see if that changes.

If you have any questions about the process, I’d love to share my beginner’s perspective with you. Does anyone else have any first-time doll-making experiences to share? I’d love to hear.

Have a great day!

Linen Lockets

Have you ever had a project in mind for a long, long time. Something new that you’ve been wanting to try, but for whatever reason, you just can’t get yourself to sit down and do it. And so you think about it and think about it, refining the idea, imagining dozens of variations on the original idea. Then you edit your idea down again, incorporate some changes, and keep thinking about it. But this whole process is all in your head. You haven’t done a thing yet. And the idea sits and sits. For me, these ideas usually just sit and sit and eventually gets replaced by a new idea. Only the strongest ideas hold on there, demanding to be made. Insisting.

This was one of those ideas. I couldn’t get it out of my head. And so, one fine day, I finally started testing it out. It was simple, really; some linen, some felt, a little hand-stitching, and voile, a locket. Simple in conception, a lot more complicated in execution. There were a lot of little details that, in all my thinking and rethinking, I hadn’t thought about. It was one of those projects that made me just so mad and frustrated. I would put it away, giving up completely, only to start again a few days later, determined that I had solved the problem, only to discover a new one. Or two new ones. Ha. The creative process is like that, I guess.

So here you go, after oh so long. The finished results.

Some lovely linen lockets. They are about the size of a quarter. I quite like them. Which is nice, since it was a long struggle to get to this point.

These three are available in my shop right now, and I think I’ll be adding more colors soon.

Have you ever made something that took a long, long time to figure out? What was the experience like for you?

Have a wonderful Tuesday.

 

Felt Modular Storage

If you were to skim through my archives, you would probably see that it’s no secret that I love felt. Let me get that straight. I love 100% wool felt. I’m a felt snob, I guess. I think it is one of the most perfect creative materials ever to come into the hands of man.

Before I left for the island, I stocked up on some really wonderful 100% merino wool felt (I used some of if for this project). And now that I have some time and  great little studio space, I’ve been dreaming up ways to use it up. One of the first that came to mind was some storage space for the never ending supply of little things that find there way onto my desk. Pencils, scissors, thimbles, etc., that just never want to stay in their designated drawer, no matter how often I put them there.

So I came up with this.

It was a lot of hand sewing, to which the callouses on my fingers can attest.

I figured out, half way through, that some rubber finger tips made the job go easier, but it was still pretty tough.

I even broke one of my favorite curved needles, which made me sad.

But all the work and pain was worth it. I love it.

I played around with the arrangement, and finally decided to go with point-side down (though, if it had been a little more practical, I would have totally gone with the leaning side position).

This is made with scraps of 5 mm felt. It seems pretty sturdy. I would have made it bigger (meaning, adding more triangles the same size) if I had more big scraps. Maybe I’ll have to pick up some more felt while I’m in the states.

Have a great day!

A Few Little Things

Christmas and New Years flew by in a blur, and now I’m battling a nasty stomach bug, so I’m not feeling up to much. I just thought I would share a few little things with you. First, Christmas. It was small, on my part, very small. I whipped up a couple of little felt lovelies for my daughters. With life and our future living situation still up in the air, and living out of suitcases for the last month, I didn’t want to add too much to the toy load, but I did want to give them a little something to make this Christmas special. First, my older daughter is OBSESSED with horses.

So a little felt horse finger puppet was an easy choice.

My younger daughter’s tastes are a little more simple, so I went with a nice little felt ball. It’s fun to chew on and to throw.

With the year before me a complete unknown, I decided to ground myself with a few goals (resolutions) that I want to make happen. I even wrote them down, in a nice little word-collage, but of course, I forgot to photograph it, and now it’s dark, so I decided to let the post go without a picture. My goals are mostly small, but after all, it’s the “small” things that make life wonderful.

Anyways, I hope you all have a wonderful week. Hopefully I’ll be feeling up to posting something for real next week!

Tutorial: Sewing Fabric “Block” Animals

***Just a reminder, the giveaway for the 3-piece nativity set is still going on, and there are a few full copies of the nativity template left and you can now purchase the full template in my brand new Etsy shop. Be sure to leave a comment on that post to get a chance to win and to get your free template.***

So, you’ve got your Nativity template, and you’ve been happily stitching away, and now you want to make those little guys into fabric block animals (like wood block animals cut out with a jig saw). Well, it’s a pretty simple process, so for all you seasoned sewers out there, just scroll down to admire the finished product. But if you’re like me, still feeling my way around the sewing thing, then you might want a quick tutorial to get you on track.

First things first, I got a question a little while ago about what kind of fabric I used, and my answer is a medium weight 100% natural colored linen from Joann’s. Nothing special (but if I had unlimited resources, I would have liked a nice, expensive, made specifically for embroidery linen). I also think a good cotton (Kona is my preferred choice) would work perfectly well, too.

1. Once you have your image embroidered, you are going to want to remove any marks you may have used to create the pattern, then iron your piece flat (I use a scrap of muslin when I iron my embroidery to protect it).
2. Then lightly trace an outline about 3/4th’s of an inch around your piece. I like to keep my border fairly well-rounded, because tight curves are much harder to sew (maybe that’s just me, though).
3. Cut around this traced line. You can use a good, sharp pair of scissors, or lay your fabric down on a self-healing mat and then carefully cut around it with a small rotary cutter.
   
4. Lay your cut-out piece on top of your back embroidered piece, or just on another piece of fabric if you don’t want your block to be double sided, right sides together. Make sure to line up the two designs as closely as possible ( I feel for the “ridges” made by the embroidery).
5. Trace the outline on your back piece of fabric and cut it out. If you are using a rotary cutter, you can skip the tracing step, and just follow the outline of your top piece as you cut out the back.
   
   
6. Cut a long strip of fabric, making it the width you want your finished block to be, plus a 1/4 inch seam allowance on both sides. The length will vary depending on which figure you are sewing, but you’ll probably need at least 18 inches, to be safe.
   
7. Sew the long strip all along the right-side edge of one side of your piece.
   You can pin it if you wish, but I found it easier to just manipulate the fabric around as I went.
   Leave at least a 1-inch tail at the beginning and end of the strip, and leave a slight gap between the beginning and end of your stitching so you’ll have enough room to turn it out later.
   (I didn’t leave extra room, so my fabric tore a little when I turned it out. p.s. I didn’t mean this to be a close-up of my pomegranate-stained finger. Sorry about that!)
8. Pin you other side to the edge of your strip, with the right side facing in. You’ll want to make sure you’re laying over the other side in mirror position so the sides will be straight look right (sorry if that’s a little confusing. I couldn’t figure out a better way to word it, so just look at the picture.)
9. Sew all along the edge, with a 1/4-inch seam allowance. Your stitching will be parallel to your previous stitching along the side strip.
10. Turn your piece out. If you are using hemostats or any pinging implement, try not to grab your embroidery, go for a blank piece of fabric.
11. Stuff your piece with little pieces of poly fill, wool, or cotton. I like to stuff mine pretty firmly.
12. Leave a little room in the bottom to pack in your weighting implement. This can be a few fishing weights, some beans, rice, or anything heavy, small, and nonperishable. If you want, you can sew a narrow weight “pouch” out of a scrap piece of the side strip and fill it with your weighting device, then stuff the pouch into the bottom your piece; this method helps keep all the weights at the bottom. Something to keep in mind: the bigger your piece, the more weight you’ll want right at the bottom to keep it upright. I didn’t get quite enough weight in my donkey to keep it really stable, so it’s a little wobbly, but it works.
13. Once you have your weight inside, sew up the opening with a ladder stitch (see my tangram tutorial for an example of that—I think I called it slip stitch there,  or just google it).

You may have to smoosh it around a bit to get it to sit right.

You’re done! (Only 23 to go. . . .) If you don’t have a nativity template, go get one here, or use whatever design you want for your fabric blocks. Enjoy!

ps. I’m linking this up at the weekend wrap-up party and at skip to my lou.

100th Post: A Giveaway and a Psuedo-Stitch-Along

Welcome November and the holiday season! I love this time of year. In risk of being redundant, I will tell you that this is my 100th post here at Beauty All Around, and in honor of that I’m giving away a little something to you, my esteemed, devoted readers. I just wanted to say thanks for joining in my efforts to create a beautiful life all around me. I love hearing from you and knowing that you’re there. Thank you!

So, what is the giveaway? Well, I have been working on a project off an on for a year (yes, one of those) and I’ve been dying to share it with you. So when I started getting close to my 100th post and thinking that I wanted to give a little back to my readers, I decided I would really share this project with you.

So here it is, a project that we can all do together. A 24-piece nativity set. Hooray! I hope you’re all as excited about this as I am. I’ve drawn and redrawn these little guys at least a dozen times now, and I finally think they’re ready to share. I had originally intended this to be simply an embroidery pattern, but as I was making it, I thought of several other applications.

My favorite non-embroidery idea was to print these out on cardstock, color them (get your kids involved with this!), cut them out and then glue them onto popsicle sticks for a set of nativity puppets to use when you share the Christmas story with your family. They would also be great as Christmas ornaments, printed on paper or embroidered. One other idea I had was doing CitraSolv transfers (like the great tutorial here) of the template  to wooden blocks for a blocky nativity set. I bet you can think of other ways to use these, too.

I chose to make a 24-piece set so that this could also serve as an Advent calendar, with one piece being added for each day leading up to Christmas. In order to make it up to 24 pieces, I had to include a couple extra characters beyond the standard family,  wise men and shepherds. The set includes

• Mary, Joseph, and Baby Jesus;
• 3 angels;
• 3 shepherds;
• 3 wise men;
• Anna (read about her in Luke 2: 36–38; I decided if the wise men are included in the nativity, even though many believe they didn’t get there until Jesus was a toddler, see Matthew 2:11, I would include her, too; since she was a witness of the baby Jesus when he was just 8 days old.)
• Simon (read about him in Luke 2:25–35; included for the same reason as Anna)
• 1 sheep and lamb;
• 1 goat and kid;
• 1 cow
• 1 donkey;
• 2 camels;
• a star; and
• a manger.

Here’s a little preview of the template:

My original idea for the nativity came from several areas. I knew since I’ve been married that I wanted the nativity to a be a focal point of our Christmas decor, since the nacimientos were a big part of Christmas for my husband growing up. I knew I wanted to make one, but I wasn’t sure what form it would take until I got an idea looking at a wood-block nativity that my aunt had made. I like the overall idea of a sturdy nativity that kids could actually play  with, and I also liked the simplified figures, but I didn’t want to do it in wood (I confess, it’s mostly because I don’t know how to use, or have access to, wood cutting implements). Also, I didn’t want any decorations to become dangerous projectiles, since I wanted the nativity to be something my kids could safely play with. So I decided to make fabric blocks, with just enough weight in the bottom to make them stand upright.

To make it a decently ambitious project (and hence why I only have 3 pieces semi-completed), I decided to make each piece double-sided so that there was a front view and a back view. Though it’s more labor for me, I really think this adds a nice dimension to the finished pieces.

What do you think?

Would you like a copy of your own 24-piece nativity set template to color, embroider, or transfer? I am giving away a copy of the 18-page black and white nativity template to the first 20 readers who leave a comment with their e-mail address. You can now purchase the full template in my brand new Etsy shop. I will also be giving away a 3-piece template of Joseph, Mary, and Baby Jesus to the next 50 readers to leave a comment with their e-mail address. After that, I’m hoping to make the full template available for sale in my soon-to-be-opened Etsy shop . Should I throw one more thing in? Sure, why not? I’m also giving away this (completed) prototype of Mary, Joseph, and Baby Jesus to one reader, who will be selected at random from all the comments (US residents only, sorry, if someone international wins, I’ll definitely give them the full template, and choose a different reader for the prototype set).  I will leave comments open from now until Monday, November 14th at midnight, and I will announce the winner Tuesday.

So here’s where the psuedo-stich-along comes in. I would love to see you guys using these templates to stitch up a great set of nativities. I know, realistically it’s very unlikely that any of us (me especially) will have the full 24-piece set ready for Advent, but I think it would be great to see how far we can get in the next (almost) two months before Christmas. If you would like to join in the stitch-along, I would love for you to share your photos of your work in progress in the Nativity Stich-Along group.

ps. I’m linking this up on skip to my lou and at the weekend wrap-up party..

Do You Smock?

I (sort of) do, and I think you should, too. It is really such a lovely technique, and it adds such a nice dimension to hand stitching. Like I mentioned in my post about my purse, I saw this tutorial on a form of smocking (at least, I’m pretty sure it’s smocking, but I’m not positive—the web page was in French), I decided to try it out.

I did a little sample, first.

It took a little guessing and trying things out, since the instructions were in French, and Google Translate just wasn’t cutting it. But after I got the idea down, it went pretty smoothly. The repetitive stitching may be tedious to some, but I like it, for the most part it is relaxing and a nice activity to do while watching a good movie.

I really liked both sides, actually, so I set about trying to figure out a way to get the results of the “back” without all the loose threads hanging out on that side.

I did pretty good, but I still have to perfect it. Maybe I’ll share that with you sometime.

One part of smocking that I did not enjoy was marking up the fabric. Especially when it came time to make my purse; it seemed like it took almost as much time to mark up the fabric as it did to sew the thing. I decided to try a different way of marking.

I made myself a little marking template (and you can too, if you want to try this kind of smocking). I just drew out a grid of half inch squares and punched holes with an awl in the corner of each square.

Then I simply laid this template down on my fabric and made little dots with a fabric marker at each hole. This method worked pretty well; it was much faster than drawing the grid out for each piece of fabric, and it saved the ink of my disappearing pen, but it wasn’t perfect. The fabric I used was dark and very shifty, so it was hard to keep the fabric from moving underneath the template, and the pen I used (light blue) didn’t show up super great. Anyways, that’s my two cents on that.

I have since seen a very detailed and helpful posts about how to get started smocking, and I think they’re great. Definitely check it out if you’re interested in learning more about smocking.

If you have any tips about smocking, I would love to hear them. Have a great weekend. Be sure to check in next week, I have a fun project to share with you, and I think I’ll be doing a little giveaway to celebrate my 100th post. See you then.

I made a purse

It is now probably painfully obvious that I’ve been off my blogging game for a while, and I apologize (I’m especially sorry for the clunky, uninspired title; nothing clever came to mind). I know, today is October 1st, and look, this is me coming up for air. Remember how I said that I would be working on my own projects in the wee morning hours? Well, I don’t know if 5 am is considered “wee,” but that’s the earliest I’ve been getting up, and it’s actually been pretty good. The whole house is still and I can breathe in the peace before a hectic day begins. Hmmmm. The only problem is that the early early morning hours before sunrise are not very conducive to lovely photodocumentation, thus my absence and seeming inactivity on this creative blog.

But ah, here is proof; I really have been up to something. A bunch of somethings, really, but this is the first one to get finished, so here it is:

A purse.

Not the first I’ve ever made, but a first from my own design.

The idea behind this purse came a long long time ago, with this pin. It was one of my first pins on pinterest, actually, and the image struck me then as a great way to give a plain old purse some character, so I tucked the idea away, simmering slowly on the back burner, waiting for the right moment for me to put the idea into action. Then this little contest came along, and I thought, sure, why not. (EDITED: My purse got selected as one of the top 10 purses for purse week over at A Lemon Squeezy Home.  Be sure to check them out, and vote for your favorite!) I needed a new purse, anyways. Plus, it was the perfect opportunity to experiment with the smocking trick.

I thought the weaving effect was lovely, and at least worth a try, so with a little practice, a slight idea for which direction to take the purse, and some trial and error, I made myself a little purse.

What do you think? Don’t you love my little model?

I hope to be sharing a little more about my new love of smocking (and little fabric buttons) soon.

Have a great weekend!

ps. I’m linking this up at skip to my lou and at thirty days.

Clay Menagerie

You may remember the beginnings of this project way back here. What is it for, you may ask? Well, I’m not quite sure yet. Right now I’m just enjoying working. That 4 1/2 pounds of modeling clay was the best craft purchase, ever.

This may be a little premature to show these, but I can shake this ominous clay lion feeling (especially after I found half of my animals with severe puncture wounds inflicted by some helpful little cousins), so here we go.

This one isn’t finished yet. I started all my pieces as just clay, but they clay was too pliable, and they wouldn’t stand up, so I had to go back and add a skeleton for each figure.
I can’t help but smile as I look at this picture, it makes me think of a little animal council. I want to try playing around with stacking these. We’ll see what comes out of this. Who knows.

Have a great weekend!