Custom Felt Birdies

I was rather excited last week to receive a lovely order for my felt birdies.

The customer had a couple of specific colour requests, but then left the rest up to me, providing they were darker colours (i.e. no white).

I really enjoyed putting together the colours and making sure no two were exactly the same.

Sarah xx

Felt Butterfly Hanger Tutorial

After seeing one of my Felt Birdies, I was asked to make a felt butterfly for a girls bedroom. As I made a start I decided to make a photo record of my progress and perhaps make a tutorial... So here goes.

This is the finished item, although I was losing daylight when I took this photo, so its not the best...

Step 1. Gather the items needed.

Butterfly template. (Find a shape you like on the internet and trace it)

Felt in co-ordinating colours,

Embroidery thread again in co-ordinating colours. I split mine into 3 strands.

Felt shapes to embelished, I used shapes from a pack bought in Tesco, but you could cut out your own.

Seed and Bugle beads to decorate.

Stuffing. (Hollowfibre or toy stuffing is fine).

Ribbon to hang

Pins and Needle and Sewing Thread

2. Pin template to felt and cut out butterfly. I cut 1 in a light mauve and 1 in dark mauve.

3. Sew the felt shapes on in a symetrical design using a small running stitch. Cut a long piece of felt for the butterfly body, shaping as desired (rounding the ends etc.,) and sew using blanket stitch in the middle of the butterfly.

4. Sew Bugle and seed beads in place, again following the symetrical design.

5. Take the 2nd butterfly shape place behind the first, making sure they line up neatly.

6. Pin the two pieces together and sew through them around the butterfly body, taking care not to let the stitches show on the front.

7. Starting at the bottom middle, using a blanket stitch, start to sew through the two layers of felt, around one of the wings.

8. When you reach the top of the wing, attach the ribbon by incorporating it between the felt layers with the blanket stitch.

9. Stuff the wing lightly before completely sewing the wing shut. Repeat steps 7 and 8 for the other wing.

10. The reverse side should look like this.

11. The finished butterfly.

Let me know if anything is unclear and I will endeavour to help you out.

Home Grown / Home Made Pumpkin Soup

For the last few years I have grown my own Pumpkins for Halloween. This year was no exception, and I manage to produce 3 football sized pumkins and one slightly larger. I gave 2 away and and we carved 2 for displaying to the trick or treaters.

I was determined not to waste the pumpkins afterwards, so have made some soup... here's how I did it.

Ingredients

Half a medium sized pumpkin

1 large onion (also home grown)

2 carrotts

1 chicken stock cube made into 450ml of stock.

Knob of butter

1. Chop the onion and lightly fry in a knob of butter in a large saucepan
2. Peel and chop the carrots add to frying onions.


3. Peel and chop the pumpkin in to small pieces add to saucepan with the stock.


4. Simmer for 20mins or until the pumpkin is soft and mashable.


5. Allow to cool slightly and transfer the contents of the saucepan to a liquidiser and liquidise to preferred consistancy.


6. Serve adding Salt and Pepper to taste!

Mmmmm...... this was surprisingly tasty!

Sarah xx

Halloween

My daughter takes halloween very seriously. And this year decided to go Trick or Treating as her favourite film character Jack Skellington. We bought face paints from Poundland and the rest we made from old school trousers and sweatshirt and a tube of acrillic paint for the stripes.

All in all the overall effect was great! We spent a good hour with friends, trapesing around the houses in our village that displayed Halloween Decorations and came home with a pumkin bucket full of sweets.

Sarah xx