Playing with felt

While winding down last night before bed(I don't get sleepy easy), I made the little felted heart and added the beads to the center of the flower. The flower I had made previously, but decided I wanted beads in the middle. Both were produced from a large ziplock bag of small assorted felt scraps purchased years ago at the thrift store. When I bought these had no idea what I would use them for, thus proving my often-used credo when browsing thrifts and fleas, that if it speaks to you, you should buy it, even if you don't know at the time what you are going to do with it. The felting process as has been made popular in recent times was evidently only known to select artisans then. Little did I know that one day I would have the basis for such a fun and easy craft.

In the past the bag of felt scraps has been used as design elements on a few ornaments I've made and once as a snowman on a stocking that my oldest dd tells me she needs for a band Christmas party like tomorrow. It was one of those instances where the night before they needed something, they remember, and it's, "oh yeah, Mom, I forgot I need __________(fill in the blank) to take to school tomorrow!" We live 15 miles out of the nearest town and at the time had no Dollar General store nearby as we do now. We happened to have a red felt stocking extra for some reason(probably because I followed the above-mentioned credo) and I got the felt scraps, beads,sequins, embroidery thread and made a pretty cute personalized snowman for her. It still gets used. I'll try to remember to drag it out and scan it to show. I can't remember why I felt the need to embellish the plain stocking? Maybe we were supposed to have made one with her name on it or something. I'll have to ask Emily. After I post about this, Holly will be asking me why I never made one for her. I can hear it now.



Well, to get back to the heart and flower. For the flower I just cut mostly heart-shaped pieces of pink felt and sewed them together first and then felted a little bit with the felting tool. I have the one with multiple needles and the cute hairbrush-looking mat bought with coupons at Hobby Lobby. The leaves are two colors of green sewn and felted. The heart started when I was looking at the wonderful Joli Paquet tutorials and had seen the felted heart in this post here by Beth Quinn. Of course I did mine differently, but this was my inspiration. Mine did start with 2 layers of white felt cut into a heart shape. Then I cut a smaller middle heart out of purple which was felted down to the center. The fuzzy pink and purple around the outside of the heart are some of those cute fibers you buy in an assortment on a card. The center has an assortment of beads in clear, white, pearl, and pink.

Now my practical friends and family would ask at this point, "yes, but what are you going to do with them?" I would have to say that I don't know, but mostly I was just playing around. They may end up as a pin, sewn to a scarf, on a funky necklace, or just an embellishment on something else I haven't thought of yet.