Variations on a theme :: a felt bag

I never thought a plastic produce bag would bring this much inspiration...
Here's another take on the very same bag - a "slashed" felt purse.
And just like the T-shirt grocery bag this one's really easy to make too.
A perfect little purse to take to the park, with an apple, a book, some sunglasses and sunscreen tucked inside.
Not that we need any sunscreen here right now, but you never know...

xo, P.

Sewing too :: kids' embroidery

It's definitely winter here now. This means more indoor activities, like crafts, painting, drawing... and now sewing, too. Both of my girls have shown interest lately in learning how to sew. Little H. actually never held a needle before, but told me several times she wanted to learn how to sew, too.

Last Wednesday we got started. And the result you can see in the pictures. The little dog was made by big sister M.. The cat is from little H.'s hand. The pattern for these little critters we found in the book "Kids' embroidery. Projects for Kids of All Ages." by Kristin Nicholas, a book with lots of fun projects, which I can really recommend, and not just for kids... Both girls got the hang of it - little H. even decided to add more detail, like the little collar (that was after she detected the golden embroidery thread in my sewing box). I hope we'll do some more...

Nested eggs

Was it the feathers on the beach or just me longing for spring, but as I was cleaning up my little craft corner and came across a bobbin of metal wire, I had this Aha-moment: a bird nest with felted eggs! (Some of you might remember the wire-wrapped felted heart from a while ago). I didn't do much crafting over the past two weeks (to the extent that I feel a little deprived...) since the kids are on winter break, but last night I had a go at it. And here's the result with a short how-to. Hope you'll like it as much as we do!



For this craft you'll need:

- metal wire, round nosed pliers and cutting pliers
- a small amount of roving, felting needles and a foam pad for needle felting the eggs
- some raffia, or other bits and pieces (newspaper, fabric, burlap, yarn, grass, twigs,...) for weaving into the nest

Step 1: Wire-wrap the nest and eggs.

Try to do so without cutting the wire - keeping the wire in one piece. Start at one side of the nest and bend, twist, turn, ... ending with the loop part for hanging. Don't worry about the wire popping up or not staying put while you go. You can correct this later with your round nosed pliers. Cut wire with the cutting pliers and wrap the end around somewhere on the side, to secure. Now, using your round nosed pliers you can perfect the wire-wrapped nest, shape the eggs,...

Step 2: Needle felt the eggs
I've used soft tones for this project, but of course the possibilities are endless. You could try to do colorfully decorated Easter eggs, for one thing. Use your imagination! First felt a little piece slightly bigger than the egg on your foam pad. Next, put the nest with eggs on top and wrap the excess over the wire and felt to secure. Keep punching those needles, flipping the project a couple of times to avoid everything getting stuck to the foam pad and in order to have both sides nicely and evenly felted. Don't worry about the wire showing, this actually adds to the charm of the project. As I wanted the eggs to look like eggs (well, sort of...) I added a little roving as I went, to give them some "body".

Step 3: Weave in some raffia or anything else you have at hand.

Other options: I think this project would work well with papier-mâché eggs, which you could paint then. This would make it a suitable project for kids (which needle felting certainly is not!!).
Need to try this with my girls!

Valentine :: Wire wrapped felted heart

Looking for a last minute Valentine's craft? Well, maybe I have something for you then!
How about a wire wrapped felted Valentine's heart? Easy and fast. What else would you want?



This is what you'll need for this project:

- wire (I used a 0.7 mm gauge)
- pliers to cut the wire
- flat nosed pliers to help you shape the wire
- a tiny little bit of red carded wool
- needle felting needles
- needle felting foam pad

Step one: Shape the heart (see diagram), starting by leaving a long end at the top where later on you will make a loop, and ending with the center heart. This is a free-style exercise! Cut with pliers and correct the shape where needed by bending here and there, using the flat nosed pliers. Make a loop at the top for hanging.



Step two: Needle felt the heart.


First, on your foam pad start needle felting a bit of wool (slightly bigger than the heart), flipping it over once. I typically use a medium sized needle to start with. Next position your wire wrapped heart on top and fold the wool over the wire while punching with your needle. This shouldn't be too precise - it's actually even nicer when the wire shows. Make sure to flip over your piece a couple of times to avoid your project gets stuck to the foam pad. Also be careful not to hit the wire, as this might cause the needle to break. Switch to smaller sized needles (fine, ultra-fine) as you move on. Continue to punch until you're satisfied with the result. You can add wool if needed or pull out some if there's too much. You can't go wrong with this project!

Some alternatives to needle felting the center part:
If you don't know how to needle felt, you could cover the heart with small strips of paper instead (this is something I came up with as I was writing - newspaper strips would work well for that). You could also wire wrap a piece of colored glass or use a colorful bead... Just use your imagination and whatever you have available!

And that's all there is to it! Easy, not?

Valentine :: something old

This is another Valentine's day gift I made a couple of years ago. This one just "happened" as I was trying to make one of these. I remember I found I had made the neck part way too long. Next, I turned the neck part into a body, added some pipe cleaners to the back to make arms and legs, as shown in the diagram. I cut the pipe cleaners to the right size and bended them to form hands and feet. The hands, I covered with the same skin-colored fabric as I used for the head.

The rest you can see in the photo: I gave the little guy some pants, little boots, a pointed hat, a scarf and a jacket (for the buttons I used French knots - you can check here for a nice how-to) - all felt. No patterns involved, all very intuitively! I just added the details as I went along. I drilled some holes in a little piece of wood to make the swing, and as it was close to Valentine's Day I added the heart... I didn't do this, but when you want to make sure the little guy stays put, you can glue him onto the swing. All this maybe took me a couple of hours at most.

If you're not familiar with making Waldorf dolls, you can find some instructions for making the head here (as this puppet is kind of small, I would leave out the nose, though). For a small puppet like this one you can use tubular gauze (finger splint padding) to be found at the pharmacy section of your supermarket.
A final note, maybe: since this puppet has a lot of small parts it's not intended to be given to young children to play with. We have ours hung up by the window in one of our girls' room...

A piece of white paper...

...and a little sun in my room is all I needed to take these pictures, all thanks to this post which I happened to run into yesterday! Next thing I'll try is to built my own light box set-up (as in this post and this one), though I'd like to come up with something I can store away easily. We don't have that much room in our small apartment to have boxes sitting around... I think this post might be a good starting point.

The above pictures show some of my needle felting projects (except for the flower brooch in the top right hand corner, which is just embroidered felt). The orange baskets in the middle are the ones I mentioned in an earlier post.

Felt like...

...felting again. I started this project last winter and somehow never got to finish it. It's supposed to become a felt basket like this one (see also for tutorial). I already made a couple, more colorful ones. The inspiration for the flowers, I got from the book "Les Ateliers du jour. Laine cardée. Créations pour toute l'année", a lovely book with beautiful, inspiring projects, one for every month as the title suggests. Ccil, the author, also designed a bunch of gorgeous stuffed animals for the store "Le Pain d'Epices", which are available as kits (a bit pricey, maybe, but oh so cute and fun to make!). I mentioned this store in an earlier post already, and what a store it is! They carry the most amazing selection of traditional toys - the kind of things we or our parents grew up with, as well as more recent toys (but never the ugly plastic stuff!), supplies for making bears, art kits for children, wooden toys, supplies to built doll houses (into the smallest details possible), everything you need for felting etc.. Again, "Le Pain d' Epices" is one of these stores, where I find it really hard to leave without buying anything. But you probably already guessed that... I don't even remember how I ended up there, but I do remember I got really hooked to the needles ever since and I do have a huge collection of carded wool in all colors imaginable by now ...

Happy Holidays!

I'd like to show off some final holiday crafting for this year. I finished this needle felted pouch last night. The heart-design complements the cover-design of the "poeziealbum" inside. Our cousin Rio had a little "poeziealbum" on her wishlist and I truly hope she likes this one. A "poeziealbum" can best be described as a friendship book which kids pass along to their friends who then make a drawing or write a little poem dedicated to the owner of the book - we used to do this long time ago when we were kids and apparently kids still do so in Belgium. Not in France though, given the difficulty I had to find one here...This one still needs to get wrapped this afternoon and then packed with all the other presents and stuff we need to take with us tomorrow.

Signing off for the week now, and the year, I wish all of you Happy, Happy Holidays! I'll be back on my little blog in 2009 and hopefully so will you!! Cheers!