Fresh Snow

 

 

 

 

 

 

We awoke to a cold snowy day and I spent most of the day inside. I completed a custom order of my heart felt ornaments and with a little help from Jimmy, my Burmese cat, prepared them, and some other items, for shipping.

The afternoon was spent sewing, working on some new zip pouches. It's time to restock the shop after the holidays.

The daylight ended with a beautiful pink and lavender sunset.

 

The shop will be closed for a couple of days while I get ready for the first Danville Handmade Market of the season on Saturday May 10, on the square, in Danville, Indiana. Please check back when I reopen the shop on May 11.
I'll have lots of new items listed next week!

Get Your Craft On!

March is National Craft Month. Whether you like to craft with paper and glue, needle and thread, or wax, or clay, you can always find inspiration from other artists and crafters on Etsy. And just in time for your Easter crafting projects, I found these wonderful, Easter inspired DIY patterns, kits and tutorials all from fellow Etsy artists.

Make your own fabric Easter eggs with Retromama's Retro Ruler Easter Eggs Sewing Kit.

This Felt Food Easter Basket PDF pattern includes instructions for the dark chocolate bunny, colorful marshmallow bunnies, woven Easter basket and more! All from GulfCoastCottagePDF.


Here comes the Easter bunny! This sweet Bunny Rabbit Needle Felting Kit is from Bear Creek Design.


Try your hand at making a molded Sugar Easter Egg with Fondant Flowers from this silicone mold. Half egg and flower mold with intructions from Whysper Fairy.


Learn how to make a Pine Needle Basket. Pattern and instructions for this wide raffia style basket offered by Make A Basket.

Happy Crafting!

Floral Inspired Crafts

I've been in a floral sort of mood this week, as you can see by my Giveaway! I came across this link on the Martha Stewart website and thought I'd share this with you.

There are 57 different floral inspired crafts made with fresh and faux flowers in one form or another! There are beautiful ideas for fresh flower arrangements and gifts, ideas for crafting with dried flowers and ideas for making paper flowers. All just in time for Spring!

And don't forget to enter my FeltSewGood Spring Giveaway here! You have three chances to win and you can enter until midnight EST on Saturday, March 13. Good Luck!

Upcycled Home Decor

I'm always interest in seeing what other wool crafters are making with upcycled/recycled wool sweaters. While browsing Etsy recently, I was on the lookout for decorative home accessories made from recycled textiles. Here are a few of my favorite home decor items, all made from recycled sweaters, from other Etsy artists.

This wool winter blue quilt was made from upcycled wool sweaters. I love the pattern and color combination. Laurine, of Greenatheart, added a cotton backing, freeform stitching and bias binding to finish this as one would a more "traditional" quilt. In Laurine's words "This not just wool sewn together, it is in every meaning of the word a quilt." Beautiful!

These huggably soft balls in earth tones are great as accent pillows or soft toys for the little ones. They are made from assorted recycled sweaters and come as a set of three from Handmadepretties.


This thick, colorful rug was woven from recycled wool sweaters! Fiveforty has a great selection of these one-of-a-kind rag rugs in a gorgeous array of colors and various sizes. I imagine these would feel wonderful underfoot.

I love the modern design of PLYtextiles geometric pattern pillows. This is the Grid Tiles Felt Pillow. They are made from recycled wool sweaters with a fabulous attention to detail.

All these artists used recycled textiles to make these one-0f-a-kind home accents.

Happy Valentine's Day!

These sweet wool felt conversation hearts are from Maiseyhandmade on Etsy.

'Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

Stay Warm and Cozy!

It looks like winter is going to stick around for a while, so to help keep you warm, I've listed some new warm and cozy scarves and mittens in the shop!

All my mittens are made from felted, upcycled wool sweaters. Felting, or fulling, the wool makes it more dense so these cute mittens should help keep your hands warm!

And they come in adult sizes and kid sizes.

Let me know if you are looking for a certain color - I love custom orders!

Refresh and Reorganize!

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday! Everything is just about back to normal around here. I was a little under the weather last week but, now I'm finally getting all the Christmas decor packed away until next year, and doing a little cleaning and reorganizing along the way. I thought it would feel good to start the new year (and new decade!) with cleaner closets, drawers and cabinets. I'm not done, mind you! I've just gotten a good start.

I've also been sewing and trying to restock my Etsy shop after the holiday shopping, so I started with some craft reorganizing.

I started with my craft closet and sewing cabinet, organizing thread, sweaters and fabric by color. Now I've moved on to some filing of paperwork and magazines that I had put off far too long. Our home office is starting to look better and I can use the desk top again!

Next I need to work on my clothes closet. It will be great to start out the new year refreshed and reorganized. I found great organizing tips and solutions at MarthaStewart.com/organizing. You can even sign up for an organizing tip-of-the-day!

New Warm and Cozy in the Shop

For some of us, it's the time of year when we have to start wearing a coat to go outside. And to go with the coat, we often need gloves, mittens, hats and scarves to keep us warm and cozy. And I have just the thing in my shop, FeltSewGood!

There are warm and cozy mittens in kids sizes. I love these cute argyle mittens.

Red snowflakes on the cream and gray background of these adult size mittens will keep grown-up hands warm.

And this pretty scarf made from felted wool sweaters will keep away the winter chill.

Stop by the shop for these and other warm cozy gift ideas.

And don't forget to leave me a comment at this post to be entered to win this week's FeltSewGood giveaway, the winner's choice of a felted wool zippered pouch!

Christmas Open House

FeltSewGood is having a Christmas Open House November 16-30. . . just in time to do some Christmas shopping!

There will be new upcycled felted wool handbags, accessories, plush and Christmas decor listed everyday.

I'll be offering a special shopping discount for my blog friends and Facebook Fans. And I'm having a holiday giveaway!

Be sure to check in often for updates on giveaways and discounts! Are you on Facebook? Get updates sent to you by becoming a fan on Facebook. . .
just click on this link FeltSewGood : : Handmade, Upcycled

Heart Felt Ornaments Tutorial

Simple to make, these cute hearts make great gifts, Christmas tree ornaments or gift wrap accents.

I used small pieces from felted, recycled wool sweaters to make my hearts. But you can also use wool felt fabric, combined with embroidery floss, beads and buttons, to stitch up these ornaments.

To make some of your own Heart Felt Ornaments, see my tutorial at FaveCrafts.com.

And you will be able to purchase finished Heart Felt Ornaments next week in the shop.

Craft Show Work

I'm busy this week getting ready for my first craft show, the Hoosier Artisan Holiday Boutique!

I've made tags using some business cards. And I've made hand-stamped cards for my flower brooches.

I have my new sign to hang on my booth table. And I'm prepared to accept credit cards at the show. I did a practice set-up of my booth so I know that it won't take long to set up on site.

I think I'm ready!

Autumn Inspiration

Celebrate Autumn! I live in the Midwest and it's the time of year for Fall Festivals and hayrides, football games and bonfires. Take a trip to the apple orchard, pick out your pumpkins fresh from the pumpkin patch and enjoy some hot apple cider.

Or, just take a walk in the woods through the crisp Autumn air and enjoy the beautiful warm colors of fall!

Where do you live and what's your favorite Autumn celebration?

Haute Handbags!

I just received my Autumn 2009 issue of Haute Handbags in the mail and my work is featured! It's fun to see published photos of my handbags!

I had submitted one of my Flower Basket Handbags and a matching zippered pouch and was excited when I found out my work had been selected.

Haute Handbags is a Stampington Publication. Stampington publishes titles such as Sew Somerset, Stuffed, and GreenCraft, and they all feature the work of artists and crafters including photos and step-by-step instructions. The Autumn issue will be available October 1. You can find them at bookstores, craft stores and online. And I'll have the featured handbag set for sale in my shop in October!

Wool Crafting in Progress Here!

Earlier in the week I completed and listed some new handbags in the shop. Then I looked at the calender and realized I have less than two months until my very first craft show! Yikes!!! I am excited and decided I'd better take inventory of my supplies and set a schedule for myself so that I have plenty of items both for my Etsy shop and the craft show. I love summer and hate to see it starting to come to an end, but I need to start thinking about (dare I say it!!!) holiday ornaments, Christmas stockings, mittens and scarves! So here's a look at what I found and what I'm working on.

More felted wool sweaters ready for crafting.

I started cutting out heart shapes for a new batch of Holiday Heart Felt ornaments.

Recycled wool flower brooches, in various stages of completion.

I love all the different colors and textures of the various types of wool!

So, that's what I'm working on these days. Now I'd better get busy and start sewing again, I have lots of work to do!

Yard Sale Craft Finds!

There were some great crafting supplies to be discovered at my local community yard sale over the weekend!

It was very hot, so no one else was interested in the wool sweaters that I found.

And I couldn't pass up the boxes of embroidery floss in seamingly every color available.

I also found beads and some vintage trims.

The most interesting of my crafty finds was some vintage craft sewing patterns. At first glance, it appears all the pieces are intact and several have never been used! The patterns are for an old fashioned upside down doll, twin kitten stuffies and another cat and dog stuffies pattern. More on those later after I tried them.

Now I'm off to finish organizing by new embroidery threads and do some sewing to restock the shop! Have a creative week, Everyone!

Toasted-Pecan Butter Cookies

Oh my gosh, you must try these! These are my new favorite cookies! The recipe for these Toasted-Pecan Butter Cookies is the "Cookie of the Month" recipe from the January '09 issue of Martha Stewart Living.

These delicate, crisp cookies have a rich buttery taste.

Toasted-Pecan Butter Cookies
Makes about 2 dozen cookies

Ingredients
3 1/2 ounces pecan halves, toasted (1 cup)
8 ounces (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup confectioners' sugar, plus more for dusting
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon coarse salt
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour, sifted


(Toast pecans on a rimmed baking sheet in oven, stirring occasionally, until fragrant and golden brown, about 10 minutes. )

Directions
Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Break each pecan half into 2 or 3 pieces. Cream butter and sugar with a mixer until pale. With mixer running, add vanilla and salt, then reduce speed to low. Gradually add flour, beating until just incorporated. Stir in pecans until distributed evenly. Cover dough, and refrigerate until firm, 15 minutes (or overnight; let dough come to room temperature before using).
Drop 2-tablespoon scoops of dough onto baking sheets, 2 inches apart. Bake, rotating sheets halfway through, until edges of cookies are golden, about 15 minutes. Let cool on sheets on wire racks for 5 minutes. Transfer cookies to wire racks, and let cool. (Cookies will keep, covered, for up to 2 days.) Dust with confectioners' sugar just before serving.

"These rich, crisp, delicate cookies owe their crumbly texture to confectioners' sugar. Pecans enhance their buttery flavor." Enjoy!

Work in Progress

As you can see, I've been making more Heart Felt brooches and felted wool flower brooches.

I set up my own little assembly line on the kitchen table!

If you are looking for a sweet Valentine gift, you can see the finished product and make a purchase through my Etsy shop, Felt Sew Good.

Sew Somerset Winter Issue

My Felt Sew Good felted flower brooches are featured in the new, Winter '09, issue of Sew Somerset magazine. Sew Somerset represents "the art of creative sewing with mixed media".

You'll find great photos and how-to techniques from a wide variety of artists and crafters. See a preview here. Or, you can see more of my work, including my Felt Sew Good handbags and toys, for sale in my Etsy shop. I'll have more shop updates after Christmas!

And The Winner Is!

Congratulations to Amie P., the winner of the Felt Sew Good Customer Appreciation Giveaway.
http://feltsewgood.blogspot.com/2008/11/customer-appreciation-giveaway.html

Thanks so much to all of those who entered.

There is still plenty of time for holiday shopping

and I'm still adding lots of new items to my Etsy shop, FeltSewGood.

Handbags, scarves and mittens made wonderful gifts!

I have some new Christmas stockings
and there are more Holiday Heart Felt ornaments on the way.