Tag Archive | felt

Make a Cute Felt Pillow

Jun28

I love working with felt especially with little ones.  It is soft and smooth to the touch, doesn’t fray and comes in sooooooooo many lovely colors and is very reasonably priced!!  What else could you ask for.

If you get the chance, let me know your reasons why you like to use felt for your own special projects.

Anyways, here is a cute and pretty simple project you can do using felt, yarn, a little batting, a small handheld punch and whatever you may have around the house to give it some pizzaz!!  This is great for any left over felt you might have stashed away or just buy some felt squares at your local fabric store.  Be creative and use two different colors!!

First, let everyone decide upon their own design.  Remember to keep it simple especially if working with young children.  A heart, a square, a ruffled circle are good choices to think about.  Again, pull out some cookie cutters to use to trace around on the felt.  Think about keeping your design no bigger than 5″ by 5″.  Any bigger, it gets to be too big for little hands to work with.

Once you have decided upon your design, trace it onto one side of the felt which will now become the wrong side.  Cut out two matching designs so you have a front and back.  Holding both your front and back pieces together, use a small handheld punch to make tiny holes along the outer edge, about 1/4″ in from the edge of your design and spacing your holes about 1/4″ apart.  Don’t get too hung up on this part trying to make it exact.  You just want to make sure that your hole openings on the front match up with the hole openings on the back.

The type of punch I used was a small heart shape design style similar to those you might find among the scrapbooking tools.  You just want to have an opening large enough for a piece of 4 ply worsted weight yarn to pull through easily.

Now get a piece of yarn (4 ply worsted weight is easy to work with) and cut it to about an 18″ length.  Use whatever color you might have available.  Remember little ones like lots of bright colors!  Using a plastic needle, thread it with your yarn and begin sewing your two felt pieces together.   Hide your knot by pulling through only the front piece so it is sandwiched between the two felt pieces.

Your stitching can be whatever works for you and your child.  You could do a back-stitch or a whip stitch  to secure your pillow front and back together.  Continue doing your sewing stitch around your pillow leaving a small opening to insert your batting.  Don’t remove the needle and thread, just secure it into the edge of your felt pillow while you stuff it.

Once you have your pillow lightly stuffed, continue sewing the last few holes together to close everything.  Knot it off on the back side.

Now decorate the front of your pillow with cute buttons, sequins, little pompoms by gluing them onto your felt.   You could use those small adhesive backed foam shapes too.  If you are up to it, glitter glue and/or decorative fabric paints are fun items to use for getting some neat pizzaz.

Most of all have fun with this activity.  Just another way to teach little ones to use their hands and to be creative as well as some special one-on-one time together making memories!

  • TIP:  Use a button shank remover to cut off the sewing loop on the back of a decorative button to make it very easy to glue in place.

HAPPY CREATING!!

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Fun with Felt

Jan23

Felt is one of those great materials that can be used for all kinds of crafts and/or projects.  It is a great medium to use with children because it doesn’t fray or ravel, it is very colorful, soft to the touch, glueable, sewable, etc.

I like to use it to help teach young children some basic sewing stitches too.  Felt can be purchased in several different colors and it is already cut into perfect squares and ready to be crafted into something fun.  For a very simple sewing project, let the child select the two pieces of felt they want to work with and just have them whip stitch the two pieces together.   You could also have them put two pieces of fabric together and do a straight stitch, either very long stitches or short stitches will work.  What stitches you show the child, will depend on the age of the little one and their coordination abilities.

If you are working with an older child, let them cut the felt into shapes, like circles or triangles and then sew these together.  Or cut out different colored ovals and circles and stitch together to form a flower. You could have them do a straight stitch along the outer edges of the felt shapes before they are sewn together for a more textured and colorful flower design.  Let imagination take center stage!!

These are activities that should be supervised by an adult.  Remember, don’t use a regular sewing needle, too sharp and too small.  There are actually plastic yarn needles available that will sew through felt and are perfect for little ones.  If you are working with children 7 or older, you could probably use a metal yarn needle or tapestry needles.  These also have the larger eyes with blunt tips too.

There are lots of choices available for your thread selection too.  You could use bright, colorful DMC floss or a ball of crochet thread or even a skein of yarn probably a size 3 or smaller.   Using bright, cheery felt squares with colorful thread makes for a fun craft project.  When using DMC floss, I would suggest using three strands to sew with.

Don’t forget to embellish your finished sewing project.  Felt is a great material to glue things on it.  You can either cut up felt scraps to make eyes, hair or geometric designs or use pompoms, big plastic buttons, cotton balls, construction paper designs; the list is endless.

Enjoy your activity, be creative, expose your little ones to sewing mediums and maybe an artist interest will develop in the process.

HAPPY CREATING!!

Disclaimer:  This post contains affiliate links – “small commission earned”