A few nights ago Abby asked me if we could do a craft together. So, I grudgingly agreed (yeah right) and this weekend we hit the fabric store. Inspired by a recent article in Martha Stewart Living
(September 2009 issue—you can also see examples here, here and here) I decided we should try needle felting.
This decision set me back a bit money-wise because of the expense of the fabric and the new tools we needed, but it was fun. 100% wool works best, and I chose the fabrics above. The girls chose these:
These are the tools we needed: a mat that looks like a giant flat brush, and felting needles.
We cut our felt shapes out with the Sizzix Big Shot die-cutting machine from Stampin' Up!
We then used the felting needle to attach the flower. The friction from the needles moving rapidly up and down through the fabric melds the two layers together.
Here Abby is using one needle to attach the leaves.
After you finish with the needles, it looks like this:
And the reverse side looks like this:
You can use it either way. For Sarah, I liked the look of the more defined shape. But for the rest of our projects we used the soft fuzzy side, because that was the look inspired by Martha. Here is Abby's finished pillow:
And Sarah with her pillow:
And here are the pillows I created:
The felting was fun, but the
Amy Butler fabric I used to back the pillows was my favorite part!
I used my motivation to sew up a couple of pillows out of this brown and blue raw silk fabric I've had sitting around for ages.
This decision set me back a bit money-wise because of the expense of the fabric and the new tools we needed, but it was fun. 100% wool works best, and I chose the fabrics above. The girls chose these:
These are the tools we needed: a mat that looks like a giant flat brush, and felting needles.
We cut our felt shapes out with the Sizzix Big Shot die-cutting machine from Stampin' Up!
We then used the felting needle to attach the flower. The friction from the needles moving rapidly up and down through the fabric melds the two layers together.
Here Abby is using one needle to attach the leaves.
After you finish with the needles, it looks like this:
And the reverse side looks like this:
You can use it either way. For Sarah, I liked the look of the more defined shape. But for the rest of our projects we used the soft fuzzy side, because that was the look inspired by Martha. Here is Abby's finished pillow:
And Sarah with her pillow:
And here are the pillows I created:
The felting was fun, but the Amy Butler fabric I used to back the pillows was my favorite part!
I used my motivation to sew up a couple of pillows out of this brown and blue raw silk fabric I've had sitting around for ages.
