I've been experimenting a lot with
wool felt, craft foam and my Big Shot dies. Just recently, I decided to
combine all of them together.
I bought Kata Golda's book: Hand Stitched Felt,
and fell in love with the messenger bag in the back of the book. A very
generous woman in town gave me a garbage bag FULL of beautiful textured
wool felt. The colors were all right up my alley.....gorgeous earth
tones! I picked some colors out and cut the pieces I needed for my bag
and then started hand stitching.
Hand
stitching is one of my favorite ways to sew. I used to love
cross-stitching when I was younger. I put it away after my kids were
born and crawling around because I was afraid they were going to find
one of my needles and get hurt. I have a habit of using my couch arms
as pin cushions (I'm REALLY trying to get out of that habit now) and
figured it wasn't good with little hands around. Now that my kids are
older, my daughter has been joining me with hand sewing and she's got
quite a knack for it. She's been creating some adorable little animals
and gifts. I'll have to share those over on her blog soon.
Anyway.....as
the bag was coming together and I added the hand stitched vines and
hand-cut felt leaves, I found that I needed a big button to put on the
front of the bag. I looked through the tin of buttons that my
grandmother gave me years ago and I couldn't find anything big enough.
I realized that I was either going to have to buy one or somehow make
one of my one. Because I tend to be impatient when I get sucked into a
project, I didn't want to have to drive anywhere to get a button (the
closest craft store is 30 min. away). I started looking around my craft
studio to see what I could use.
I knew I wanted to incorporate
butterflies onto my bag. My Beautiful Butterflies Big Shot die was
going to be used for that. Then I started thinking about the craft foam
I had and it all started coming together in my mind.
I
cut yellow foam butterflies with the smallest of the butterflies on the
die and then cut out two felt butterflies for each foam piece. I
adhered the felt butterflies to the foam with some SNAIL adhesive and
then stitched them together and did detail stitching with embroidery
floss. (See? All that cross-stitching floss has come in handy even
though I've put the cross-stitch stuff aside for now.)
I
stitched the first butterfly onto the panel under the front flap so
that it sat where a button would normally have gone. I stitched it to
the bag in the center of the butterfly so that the sides could stay
free. By stitching in the center, the stitches form the abdomen of the
butterfly. I cut a button hole in the top flap and stitched around it
to reinforce it. I simply fold the butterfly wings to put them through
the button hole. When the wings spread out, they keep the flap closed.
I stitched some extra foam/felt
butterflies on the front flap and then also stitched 5 of them along
the rust colored shoulder strap. (Click on any of the photos for a larger version in a pop-up window.)
I'm
so jazzed with how it turned out. It took me 9 days to finish it, but I
wasn't working on it non-stop either. It was a great way to do
something for myself and I especially love that it's all hand stitched.
Hope you have a beautiful and creative week....and an even more creative and inspiring 2010!
