Felt Animal Masks for Kids

Jan25

Lately, I have a new obsession with felt masks for kids. It all started when a friend asked me if I could help her with her baby’s Halloween costume. She was dressing her baby as a bald eagle. (Get it? Because she’s bald.) I helped by creating a mask out of felt that the baby would wear more like a headband. I don’t want to post a picture of my friend’s baby without her permission, so you’ll just have to trust me, it was adorable!

And as things can go for me, I quickly became obsessed with the idea of creating felt masks for kids, and the Internet has so many ideas to share with me!

My niece and nephew live abroad, and typically when I want to buy them presents, I shop through Amazon because, at the end of the day, the shipping is cheaper. But I think what spurred my obsession was the thought: Felt masks are going weigh nothing! They are going to be so cheap to ship overseas!

So one Saturday, I sat down and created six felt masks—three for both my niece and nephew. For the most part, I found some sort of inspiration online and then freehanded the whole thing. The blue bird was my most abstract mask, but it turned out to be my favorite.

Sure enough, once wrapped and packages in a mail bag, the total weight was less than a pound. It was the cheapest present I’ve ever sent to Europe. My intention was to send them as Christmas presents, but one day in mid-December, I got a text from my sister-in-law with a few pictures and the caption, “I’m so sorry, but we just couldn’t wait!”

I may just have a new business venture in the making!

Felt Daily Activity Schedule

Jan23

This visual activity schedule for kids was a custom order for a friend of a friend, and looking back over these images, I realize that the person who purchased this got quite the deal. (Aka I charged way too little… which is the story of my business life.)

I am beyond proud of this project. I love how it’s colorful. I love that it’s made out a felt. And I love that I took the extra time to make this banner sturdy—with the hopes that it not only survive one child but could possibly be passed down for the use of a second or a third.

The idea was provided by the customer. Her son thrived under a routine, and she found that their days progressed better when he understood, to a point, what to expect. She provided the individual prompts—signs for lunch, playtime, bedtime, snack, etc. We made sure there were enough signs to make it through the hours of the days, plus extras… because obviously, you need some variation within the week.

She asked for the day to start at 7 and end at 7, and then I came up with the rest from there. The trick was trying to figure out how to visualize 13 hours on a banner without making it enormous. Though the problem quickly resolved itself when I realized I would need to create some sort of pocket to store the little signs. I created two columns with seven panels each.

Before finishing the banner—using quilting techniques like binding—I attached magnet snaps to the banner along with the signs. Since felt is a soft fabric, I worried that the act of pulling the signs off the banner each day would quickly wear on the fabric, so I made sure each magnet had a backing of thick cardboard.

I designed the banner so it could be hung on the wall and easily used by a child. Plus, I just wanted it to look good. Knowing it was for a boy, I used lots of blues and greens. But you could easily use different color palettes, like purple and blue, yellow and navy, pink and more pink!

All of the signs were hand sewn, but I did use a sewing machine for the banner.

… Yeah, I definitely should have sold this for four times the price I charged. Oh well.

Embroidered Treasure Map

Jan19

My nephew Josiah is just the coolest kid because he has the most amazing imagination. When he was like three or four years old, I really wanted to create a podcast where it would be just me and him talking about stuff. At the time, you could bring up any topic and he would have an opinion about it—despite knowing nothing about it. His imagination would just run wild.

One day the idea came to me—I would ask Josiah to draw a treasure map on a square piece of canvas fabric, and in the weeks that followed, I would embroider over the lines, making his map a permanent, one-of-kind piece.

Together we sat down at my parents’ dining room table. I started by drawing the treasure chest, and I let Josiah take it from there. Though I didn’t want to be too influential in his drawing—as I wanted it to truly capture Josiah’s imagination at the time—I did encourage him to change colors every once in a while. (Selfishly I had envisioned this being a colorful piece.)

After he finished drawing, I had him identify everything, which turned out to be the cutest part of the whole thing.

When I started this project, I thought the embroidery aspect would only take me a few weeks. Well, despite my best intensions, it ended up taking me several months.

One thing I decided early on is I wouldn’t care about being consistent with the embroidery floss. I easily could have stock piled the same color of blue embroidery floss to use throughout the project, but I decided I didn’t want to buy anything for this. Instead, I just used the collection of thread I already had.

I think this choice added to the overall adorableness of the map.

I also didn’t fret too much about my stitching. For the most part, I kept the stitches short, and I didn’t worry about completely covering all of Josiah’s drawing. I was okay if a few ink marks peeked through.

To finish it, I cut a piece of blue fabric as the back piece, and I used the quilting technique of binding to create a solid edge. While I created this piece for Josiah to play with—thinking he would roll it up, carry it around and use it in his pretend play—I also think it would be an adorable idea to frame the piece and use it as decoration in your house.

Felt Christmas Stockings

Jan15

It’s been a year and a half since I logged into this WordPress site, and this great hiatus is not because I’ve stopped crafting. Goodness, no. But instead, I let this project that once brought me tremendous joy sail away with other seasonal life interests. I could blame the busyness of work or that I’m now taking graduate classes at night. But in truth, I think the joy that led me to create this blog began to fade a year and a half ago, making a fun side hobby feel more like work.

Well, as some people say, never throw anything away because its bound to come back in style.

Over the Christmas break, I was inspired to read through the countless blog posts I have here. Of course, it’s a little embarrassing to see how many spelling and grammatical errors exist (and I’m sure there are a few in this post too), but the walk down memory lane was fun. At the same time, I was creating felt stocking for my parents, using patterns/kits by Bucilla.

Christmas was a little different this year for my family. My mother was recently diagnosed with cancer, and two weeks before Christmas, she underwent a very intensive surgery that caused an extended hospital stay. My parents live in Georgia; I live in Alabama. So for several weeks, I made the trip back and forth.

As I’ve said on this blog before, my mother has the best advice, and her crème de la crème is this: Know what makes you happy, so when times turn sad, you have tools you can use to lift yourself up.

My greatest tool is crafting and sewing… and a whole of prayer. I can’t remember when the idea came to me, but I know this project of creating felt stockings was one of the greatest blessings during this difficult time.

Not only did the kits throughly entertain me during a time where there was a lot of sitting around, but they able gave me a focused line of thought on something positive and beautiful.

I finished my dad’s stocking before the surgery, and I worked on my mom’s throughout her recovery in the hospital. Once it was finished, I was able to hang it on her wall, adding a bit of Christmas decoration to her small hospital room.

And I will note: the kits were amazing portable. I utilized small jars to organize the beads and sequins, using a magnet on the underside of the lids to store the sewing needles. I was able to contain everything I needed in a single freezer zip lock bag, so no matter where I was—siting at my craft table, the floor of a waiting room, the chair in the hospital room, etc.—I was able to work on it.

Mom ended up leaving the hospital on Christmas afternoon, and in the following days, we opened presents and tried our best to celebrate a normal holiday season. The new stockings for Mom and Dad hung on the mantle with the felt stockings Mom made for me and my brothers when we were born.

I’ve been writing a lot about this season I just experienced, mainly in Word documents that one day may see the light of day. In doing so, I felt the joy that I once had for this blog rising back up with in. So here I am, back for reading pleasure. The good news is, I have a lot of content from the past year and a half that I can share with you. I hope you enjoy.

Let’s Embroider a Logo

Jul12

Gift are best personalized.

My friends at my previous job – Oxmoor House – reached out to me and asked if I could create a patch for a gift they were working on for a coworker who was moving on to new job. Of course, you can’t say no to a friend. So I got to work on the patch while they hired someone on Etsy to make this knitted iPad case.

I’ve never tried to copy a font before (most of what I do is free hand), so this was an interesting challenge. Luckily, I figured it out in about 15 minutes. I could have done a better job stitching the patch to the case, but oh well, the imperfection adds to the homemade charm.

Travel-Inspired Embroidery Baby Announcement

Apr9

I am oftentimes asked to create something based on a piece of inspiration a person has found. In the case of this project, a friend had seen a swatch of fabric with a pattern made out of travel tags representing cities all of the world.

This friend, Rachel, is a great traveler, and as the birth of her second child approached, she asked me to make a embroidery baby announcement based on the fabric swatch.

Let me tell you, this project was fun!

I asked Rachel to pick four cities she wanted me to represent, and she was kind to let me design the rest. I decided to keep it simple. I used airport codes, but for cities with more vague codes like OSL, I thought it was best to include the name of the city.

I worked to complete the eight tags in the months leading up to her due date, and then finally, once little Elliott was born, I stitched in his name and info. I also did a zig zag stitch to overlock the edges to avoid unraveling before Rachel could get the piece framed.

A little freehand stitching

Sep22

One night, I decided to do a little freehand stitching, not really knowing what I wanted the final piece to be. I started by creating the bowl, and then the different succulents started to take shape. Sewing can have a lot of rules, and I love – from time to time – to take a break from straight lines and even stitches to do something more spontaneous. The final product was the perfect addition to a care package a sent to a dear friend.

A Simple, Floral Wedding Embroidery Hoop

Sep19

Another wedding, another embroidery hoop. But I think this one is my favorite so far. I’ve been following a few artists who use very small embroidery stitches to create these precious floral arrangements with thread, and I was inspired to try to here. I love how how the flowers turned out.

Summer Wedding Embroidery Hoop

Jun28

I attended a beautiful wedding this weekend of my sweet friends Kathleen and Drew. It took place at Ephesian Farms, which I was told is a relatively new wedding venue about 45 minutes outside of Birmingham. Every detail of the wedding was so thoughtful, but knowing Kathleen, I was not surprised. So I knew I wanted to return the thoughtfulness with a sweet gift. I made this embroidery hoop and attach it to a gift – a book all about Atlanta, the city they are moving to after their honeymoon.

Embroidered Hand Print Pillow

Jun20

This project came out of a great collaboration. A friend named Amy recently connected with me on Facebook, asking if I had any ideas for a gift I could make for her mother. She wanted the gift to somehow involve her son and niece (her mother’s two grandchildren). I spent the morning brainstorming, and after a little back and forth on Facebook, we came up with the idea of embroidering the children’s handprints on a pillow.

I am so obsessed with this finished product.

The first step required a lot of Amy since she had to trace her son’s hands. Apparently, he kept trying to grab the paper. Her sister did the same with her daughter. The traces weren’t technically perfect, but I loved the authenticity of them. It liked that it looked like we traced their hands directly onto the fabric.

Amy and her sister sent me pictures of the kids’ hand prints on a 8.5 x 11 pieces of paper. Knowing the size of the paper, I tried my best to print the hand prints to scale. I cut them out, and traced them onto the fabric with a yellow pen. (It probably would have been better to use a pen with disappearing ink, but I didn’t have one at the time.) I then used black thread and embroidered on top of the yellow line.

Since their hand prints were so tiny, I embroidered a few details to help fill in the space, like their names and the year. With everything stitched, I turned the two pieces of fabric in to a pillow.

I love when a customer order turns into a collaboration like this, with both sides bringing ideas to the table. Amy’s mother loved the pillow. But who wouldn’t love such an incredibly thoughtful gift!

For the Love of Felt

a blog for all things sewing and crafts

Category Archives: Embroidery Projects