Lion Monster


This didn’t quite turned out as I imagined, but here it is anyway.  I asked my five-year-old to draw something for me to make into a stuffed animal for her birthday.  She quickly drew this “lion monster” and I used felted sweater, fabric scraps and felt to put it together.

Sewing with felted sweaters was difficult for me and I found it hard to avoid this lumpy look without overstuffing it.  I think it would be helpful to use iron-on stabilizer when working with sweaters.  I cropped this photo intentionally because my construction on the bottom is terrible!  It helps me to think of my awful hand sewing as folksy and quaint, rather than messy and uneven.  Whatever works.

Thrifted Holiday Trees

There are a million felted sweater projects out there, but I think it’s a great idea to save money and recycle wool sweaters.  I found some more sweaters on a thrifting excursion the other day, so I made these plump holiday trees.  They are about 7″ tall and each has 32 felted sweater circles.

Supplies:

  • felted wool sweaters (washed and dried 100% wool sweaters)
  • scissors
  • pins
  • wire
  • wire cutters
  • bead or star for the tree top

Instructions (for one tree):

Step 1: Print out the templates below and cut out paper circles.

thrifted-trees-page-1

thrifted-trees-page-2

thrifted-trees-page3

Step 2: Pin paper circles to the sweaters and cut two of each size.  It helps to cut out a square from the sweater and work with that, rather than trying to cut from the whole sweater.

Step 3: Bend the wire at the bottom and begin slipping sweater circles onto the wire, beginning with the largest first.  It helps to find the center by folding the circle in half, then half again.

Step 4:  Wrap a bead or star at the top and bend the wire around.  Snip.

If you make one of these, I’d love to see a photo in the Make it Monday Flickr group.  Thanks!

Clean Holidays

Everyone I know should be clean this holiday season.  I made way too many of these snowflake soaps, using the same melt and pour method that I’ve mentioned before.  Our dining room looks like a soap shop right now.

And check out the recycled Thanksgiving crafts from my post for Alpha Mom this month.

Felted Flowers

The weather is getting colder and I realized that the girls don’t have a lot of warm clothes.  So this morning I bought a simple sweater dress from Target, but wanted to give it something extra.  I cut up some wool felted sweaters and made flowers.  Has anyone noticed my penchant for red and blue?  I think I’m getting predictable.