poppies, poppies, and more poppies….

During our last mini-craft social when Meghan made that awesome snail pillow (which I plan on stealing from her) the rest of us were working on poppies!

I came across the how to on How about orange and fell in love with the idea immediately. These easy to make fabric poppies make wonderful pins and adornments for anything, the possibilities are truly endless. We pretty much followed the directions to a T. We used hairspray instead of fabric stiffener and it worked just fine, for a fraction of the cost! And to speed up the process we dried them with a hair dryer instead of waiting for them to air dry. I have decided for the center I prefer a button instead of the fabric bunch, a vintage brooch would work great as well! Once the poppies were all glued together I found that they were pretty big, so I bent the petals back in different directions for a flatter look, although the originals look great too.

           

You don' have to use all of the petals, this is a picture of the mid way point

                                       

Different ideas…..

Gina chose to use felt instead of cotton or linen, and those turned out very well, I wanted to pin one to winter hat! I think the felt will be more durable in the long run, too. Plus it cut some time out of the process because there was no ironing or spraying, and that is always a plus. :)  Also, Sarah picked a patterned fabric mixed with a solid, and that created a fun and bright flower, very cool! All together everyone was very happy with the outcome. So print out those template and get creating!!!! -Julie

A mini craft-social and an adventure in pillow making...

While roaming around the Renegade Craft fair last month I came across the cutest pillow that I wanted, nay - needed, to have and it only cost (holy crud!) $55. How swiftly my dreams of having this pillow on my couch faded. After much longing, Julie and I once again discussed this pillow and thought that I could make that pillow myself at a fraction of the price, and so I did.

Julie, a few of our friends, and me all got together one night after work to socialize and do some crafting. Everyone else made fabric poppies (which Julie will discuss later) except for me - my goal was to make this beloved pillow. It was a great night of cutting, gluing, and my favorite - hand sewing.

Here is the inspiration pillow:

Out For a Stroll by Alison Tauber

Alison's pillow is admittedly better than mine, but I think I could get it right on the second try.

Here is my pillow (and the process of creating it):

First I cut out the felt shell shape and sewed the spiral detail

The I pinned it to the gray fabric that I bought and cut. I wanted a 15" pillow, but I didn't think it through well enough and ended up with a 14" pillow. Obviously, I forgot about adding an extra inch so I could have a 1/2" seam. Oops!

From there I pinned the two pillow pieces together and begun hand sewing the edges. I have a sewing machine, but honestly - I've never used it. I enjoy a good hand sewing, plus it's much easier to tote it around. So after a total of maybe...5 hours? I had this pillow:

 

 Here's a close up of the snail.

Another thing I'd do different about this (besides leaving room for the seam) is that I'd raise the snail up so you could better see the bottom of it. Overall I love it and instead of $55, this pillow only cost me about $10.

Craft Social

Julie and I went to the Craft Social in Evanston this past Friday and it was amazing in all ways. The food was delicious - I ate something that was part smore and part brownie, which means it was like heaven in my mouth. I was super excited about the felt & button flowers and Julie was hoping to make something amazing at the Ink Blot t-shirt table. Turns out the ink blot project was a no-go for this social so while we waited for the felt & button flower leader to navigate through traffic we made some pretty adorable collage owls. Behold!:
After the owl making we returned to the felt & button flower table and it had already started, oops! So once we figured out what we were supposed to be doing we set out to make our flowers. The options provided were to make a felt flower and attach it to a floral stem or to make it into a pin. I was all geared up to making it into a pin, but then decided to save it and make it into a headband (although our leader, Emily, told me that it is perhaps going out of style - say it isn't so!). I haven't attached mine just yet, but I'm looking forward to wearing it. Here's my flower that I lovingly stitched together:

I'm a fan of the double button center.