Tag Archives: felt crafts

March 7, 2012 · 1:27 pm

St. Patrick’s Day Centerpiece

I love me a good recycled craft…and this one is “green” in all senses of the word! Made from recycled items and perfect for St. Patrick’s Day, this beer bottle vase is so easy to make and would look adorable on your table or mantle. This is a great way to use up those Guinness bottles you have lying around, as well as some left over felt scraps from projects you’ve done before.

A few weeks ago I posted a Felt Flower Tutorial, as well as a Felt Shamrocks Tutorial. Both of those will come in handy when making this cute little St. Pattie’s craft.

St. Patrick’s Day Centerpiece

Materials:

1 empty beer bottle, label removed, washed and dried
Various scraps of green and white felt
Green and white felt (optional–only if you’re making the flowers)
Craft pipe cleaners (optional–only if you’re making the flowers)
Hot Glue Gun
Needle and green embroidery thread

Directions:

Follow the directions for the Felt Flower Tutorial to make the flowers for your vase. If you’d rather use real flowers or no flowers at all, simply ignore this step.

Follow the directions for the Felt Shamrocks Tutorial to make 3 green shamrocks, as well as 1 white one. Feel free to use whatever colors you’d like. I happened to have felt in “True Green”, “Forest Green”, and “Sage Green”…so those are the shamrocks I created. I also made a white one and did a simple stitch in green thread around the edge of the shamrock.

I also created a little belt to go around the bottle. I made this out of the “Sage Green” felt and 2 strips of white felt. Glue the shamrocks to the felt belt.

When you have your shamrocks arranged and glued to the belt, simply glue it all to your beer bottle. Add your flowers and you’re good to go! This is a really fun and economical idea for table centerpieces or party favors.

Celebrate creativity every Wednesday with a “Creativi-bee” post, where I share easy craft tutorials, project ideas, and craft collections.

How to Make Felt Shamrocks

Man oh man…this week has just zoomed by! I can’t believe we’re heading into March already…and let me tell you, spring can’t get here soon enough!

Today I have a fun little felt craft for all you lucky Irish lassies out there. With some left over felt scraps and a needle and thread, you can easily make this felt shamrock, perfect for hair clips, headbands, or whatever you’d like.

All you need to do is cut out four felt shapes that look like this. Line them up in a row and weave the needle and thread through the bottom of all four shapes.

Here’s what it looks like after the needle and thread have been weaved through all four pieces of felt.

Finally, take both ends of the string and pull, forcing the four felt pieces to bunch up together. Tie a couple knots to keep the strings secure and you have a cute little shamrock! You can cut off the excess threads or use them to help secure your shamrock to a package, headband, or whatever you’d like.

Come back next week for a fun St. Patrick’s Day craft using this cute felt shamrock!

Celebrate creativity every Wednesday with a “Creativi-bee” post, where I share easy craft tutorials, project ideas, and craft collections.

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Tagged as creativi-bee, fabric crafts, felt crafts, st. patricks day

February 15, 2012 · 10:54 am

How to Make Curled Felt Roses

Felt is one of my absolute favorite things to craft with. And at about $0.25 a sheet, it’s no wonder that felt is so popular.

With spring quickly on the way, I’m all about flowers now. I seem to have a problem keeping real flowers alive, so I’ll settle for fake ones that don’t require a lot of attention. Plus allergies make having real flowers kind of a drag sometimes.

But, back to felt. These adorable felt flowers are so insanely easy to make. This is a great way to use up old felt scraps, by the way! Add these adorable flowers to bobby pins, packages, pins, or even glue a whole slew of them to a wreath (that’s my next project to tackle!). Once you make one or two, you’ll be completely hooked on this super fun and felty craft!

Felt Flower Tutorial:

Materials:

Felt in the colors of your choice
Scissors
Pen
CD
Hot glue gun

Instructions:

1. First you’re going to want to cut a circle out of felt. You can create a scalloped edge if you’d like to give a nice look to your rose, but it’s not essential. I’ll do one of each here so you can see the difference. Use the CD to create a circle and cut it out. To create a scalloped edge, you can do it freehand or trace the cap of the pen over and over around the circle.

2. Cut into your circle and continue cutting until you have a spiral, like shown below.

3. Starting at the small end of your spiral, begin wrapping the felt around itself until a rose begins to form. Secure the tail end with a little bit of hot glue.
4. Place some hot glue on the bottom of your rose and cover it with a scrap piece of fabric. Cut off the excess and there you have it! An adorable felt rose!

Here you can see what the plain circle looks like (white), as well as the scalloped circle (green). Like I said, once you start, it will be hard to stop…and here’s some proof. I went through all my felt scraps and made tons of felt roses!

Celebrate creativity every Wednesday with a “Creativi-bee” post, where I share easy craft tutorials, project ideas, and craft collections.

Scrap Fabric Hand-Sewn Owls

I so vary rarely make fabric or sewing crafts, so I have a ton of left over fabric scraps from crafts I’ve made a while ago. In an effort to clean out my fabric stash and try some new crafting techniques, I decided to make these cute little owls (because I need MORE stuff just hanging around my apartment!).

I just love these cute little felt owls, though! I got so carried away that I ended up making one for almost every holiday! They’re so easy to make and they’re the perfect last minute Valentine gift for your sweetie! These little felt owls also make great ornaments or gift tags.

While I made my owls by hand, you can easily use a sewing machine. I was just too lazy to get my machine out for these little guys 🙂 So gather up your fabric scraps and let’s get to bird makin’! For the sake of the season, I’ll show you how to make a Valentine’s owl, specifically the one in the second row all the way to the left.

Felt Owls

Materials:

Owl template (I drew mine freehand-it stood about 4 1/2” long and 2 1/4” wide)
Felt in varying colors
Scissors
Needle
Thread
Colored embroidery thread
Sewing pins
5-6 cotton balls

Instructions:

Here’s a picture of my template, in case you want to print it and use it yourself. You might have to scale it to the size you’d like.
Pin your template to the felt you’d like to use for the wings of your owl. I marked the right and left wings just in case!
Cut your wings out like so. Save all the extra pieces because you’ll need them later.
Pin the middle template of your owl to the felt you’d like to use for the body of the bird. You’re using the main template to help you pin your wings in place.
Using your white felt, cut out two circles, about the size of your thumb. These are for the eyes. Pin those in place on the body of the bird (remove the main template before pinning on the eyes, obviously!).
Cut out two small circles and a beak from your black felt and a little tummy (if you want!) from another shade of felt. Pin the tummy in place so your bird looks like this:
To attach the small black circles, use some colored embroidery thread and tie a knot at the end. I tied mine three times just for safe measure! Cut off the small tail and string the thread through the black dot so the knot is on the OUTSIDE. Then string it through the center of the white eye. Secure and repeat for the other eye.
Continue to sew all the other embellishments into place. Soon your little owl will look like this!:
Now it’s time to assemble your owl! Place the owl face down on the back fabric. You want both front sides facing each other and the back sides facing out…that way when your turn it inside out, the front sides are on the outside!
Pin the segments of the cut templates back into place.
Sew around the template, stitching the two fabrics together. You can use a machine for this, but I didn’t mind doing it by hand. Leave about 2 inches of room for stuffing.
Cut about a quarter of an inch around your stitching to remove excess fabric. Remove the template and discard. Turn your owl inside out so the wrong side is now inside and the right side is on the outside.
Pull your cotton balls apart so they’re long and stringy. Stuff some into the ears of your owl first, and then stuff until he’s full! Sew the hole closed and you’ve got yourself a cute little owl!