Repurposing Day 18: Felt Flower Poufs

I'm doing another re-post today for a repurposing project.  This is a cute and easy way to spice up an old sweater, cardigan, scarf etc...enjoy!  I promise I have new projects to post soon!  After making my felt stockings, I've had a ton of leftover felt. So, I decided to try making these flower poufs, which ended up being very easy!! You can pin one on a sweater, headband, barrette, use it to decorate a package...the possibilities are endless!




First, you need to cut 8 felt rounds, the bigger the circle, the bigger your pouf will be.



Then, you are going to take four of the circles and fold them into fourths


Once they are folded, you need to pin them together to form a circle like pictured below. Use lots of pins because they are a little tricky to work with at this point.


After you have them pinned, simply sew them by hand in the center. Mine does not look pretty and I just kinda randomly sewed. This will not show in the end, so you basically are just making sure that nothing comes loose!



After you have sewed the first four circles, you will take the next four and do the same thing. Once they are folded, just layer them right on top of the four that are already sewn, and continue attaching so that you now have two layers of four folded felt circles.


After everything is attached, remove all the pins and you have a cute little pouf!! See, none of the messy stitching shows!

DIY Wooden Picture Frame

If you are stopping by homemade ginger for the giveaway, you still have time to enter.  If you don't know about the giveaway, head over there now!

Here's what I've been working on lately:

As I was brainstorming for some craft ideas for my MOPS group, I came across several tutorials on  making these wooden frames using scrapbook paper. We ended up doing it in MOPS and I even had a craft night with some friends where we made more.

We used these $1 frames from Michaels

And some matte finish Mod Podge

Brush on 2 coats of Mod Podge, don't be afraid to use quite a bit.

While it's still wet, lay the frame face down on the paper. I used a vintage dictionary page for this one:

Flip it over and smooth out any bubbles and wrinkles. I just used the card that came inside the frame to do this:

After it has dried for a few minutes, use an exacto knife to trim around the edges. This does not  need to be perfect.

See how ragged mine looks?

Now you can sand down the edges so that the paper is flush with the frame.

Now you can brush a few more coats of Mod Podge on the front.

Once it's dry, you can add any embellishments. I did my new favorite felt flowers on this one:

I added some ribbon and a simple flower to this one:

And some fun ribbon and a flower to this one:

What a fun and personal way to give someone a picture of your family for Christmas!

More Felt Flowers

Yesterday's giveaway is still going on, so head over there to enter!

In the meantime, I've been making more felt flowers like the ones I made for my winter wreath.   I decided to turn them into some pretty darn cute hair accessories for my two little cuties.

Here is how I made my flowers. 

Start out with a circle of felt. The bigger the circle, the bigger the flower will be.  Don't make your circle perfect, an organic shape is what you want.

Start cutting around the edge of the circle in a spiral.

You will end up with a long piece of felt.  Leave a circle at the end of the piece like this:

Starting with the pointy end, start rolling the felt to create a cinnamon roll type shape:

Keep rolling and rolling until you get the end with the circle piece attached.

Turn your flower over and the circle piece will lay on the back side, providing kind of a base.

Glue it down with a hot glue gun.

And you are done! I attached one to a barrette for Lula:

And I glued two small ones to a piece of elastic for a simple headband for Jane:

It's addicting and so easy!

Now,  go enter in my 100th post giveaway if you haven't already!

Winter Wreath

I recently came across this yarn wreath tutorial and had to try it!  My fall wreath had been hanging on the door for a little too long. This was so cheap and simple to do and I love how it turned out!

I decided not to make it overly "Christmasy" so that I can have it out for most of the winter.

I had never made felt flowers like this before and I really love how they turned out.  I plan to make more using this method and add them to other projects.  I also picked up some of these white berries at Joann's for $1. I think they really add the finishing touch to the wreath.

Felt Christmas Garland

I decided to use up some of my felt scraps and create an easy and adorable Christmas tree garland this year.  I've seen some similar around and knew it would be super easy to make!





The most tedious part was cutting out all the circles.  I made them all about the size of a quarter, but you could do various sizes if you wanted.

Then, I simply sewed them together, stitching down the middle of each circle and leaving a space in between each one. I used gray thread to blend with all the colors.

I love how it adds color to our tree! I made 2 fairly long garlands with my scraps. Maybe I'll make more next year to hang along our mantle.

Another Headband

Here is a picture of the headband I made to go with Lula's easter dress.

Like the other ones on my previous post,  I modified a Heather Bailey pattern and added felt circles for embellishement.

The most impressive thing about this headband is that Lula kept it on her head almost the entire day! I will now have to make tons more for her to wear this summer!

Hooray for Headbands

I've made a ton of headbands using this free pattern from Heather Bailey.  However, I recently made two for a new baby friend and decided to change it up a bit.  I eliminated the ties and added felt embellishments! It's such an easy and cute baby gift! It literally takes 10 minutes to make one-anyone can do it!

Here is a picture of the other one I made. (Isn't that tree fabric the cutest??)

Freezer paper & felt shirts

I've been making freezer paper stenciled shirts for a few years now and it's very addicting! If you don't know what that is, here is a tutorial. I like to do a few things differently than what is explained in that tutorial.  For example, I like using sponge brushes to apply the paint, my favorite fabric paint is jaquard and I'm too impatient to let it dry overnight before ripping off the freezer paper, so I just use a hair dryer on it for about 2 minutes!

Anyway, I tried combining freezer paper stencils with felt for some Christmas gifts. The one pictured above is a stenciled owl with a brown felt branch and bow. I just hand stitched the felt on.

I stenciled the dog in this one and did pink felt for the collar and bow and again hand stitched.

I think they made for some pretty cute little girls shirts!  You should try it!! (at least the freezer paper part, it's so easy!)

 

felt barrettes

First of all, sorry for the long delay in posting! The holidays have been crazy, apparently. I have a lot of things up my sleeve to post, so stay tuned! I will try not to be absent for so long again!

Once again, I've been trying to come up with clever way to use all of my felt scraps. Lula needed a hair accessory to match her brown Christmas dress, so I made a simple flower, sewed a button on and hot glued it to a barrette! It turned out super cute and the only sewing, was just the button!

I also made a little leaf barrette for my niece, Maelie:

I did do some hand stitching on this one to add a little bit of detail. I might have to make another one for Lula!

Here is a view of the back:

diy felt stockings

One of my many projects for the Christmas season was to make stockings for our family. I found this great Amy Butler stocking pattern here. It's free and super easy! I'm kind of obsessed with felt right now. It's such a great material to work with if you are new to sewing. Because it doesn't unravel, you are able to sew leaving raw edges which makes things so easy!

I bought my high quality wool felt from Erica's and Heather Bailey

I followed the Amy Butler stocking pattern, but wanted to add felt details to personalize the stockings. Before sewing the pieces together, I made a paper patterns of the shapes that I wanted to sew onto the stocking.

After cutting out the shapes, I sewed them directly onto the stocking pieces

I really wanted our names on the stockings, so I tried embroidering them. This was my first try at embroidery, so it's not perfect, but oh well!

I love the little bit of fabric that shows on the outside and lining

The finished product!!

If you want some personalized stockings, you should try it!