Shake a Leg! (Silly...)

Well, after much delay here is the next step in my little dog!  I thought I would try and show detailed steps of the process I took to attach her second leg.  Yes, she's a girl.  Her name is Sadie.

For the leg I used about this much roving:

Which I then folded in half...

And used the Green 5-needle tool until it looked something like this...

I found it helpful to keep rolling and folding the fiber to get it to compress into a leggish shape!  Afterwards, I used the Pink 3-needle tool to shorten the length by inserting the needle at an angle into the leg, like so:

Here is a snap showing the size of the leg just before I attached it, as compared to the finished other leg:

It made sense to leave the leg just a little bigger, since you compress it more when attaching and shaping it.

So, I positioned the leg...

And used the Pink 3-needle tool to attach it at the back end:

Once I had the leg stuck on at the back, I decided that just one needle would give me the detailed control to shape the leg (I still think it's amazing that you really can stick on a single piece of wool at a time!), so I decided to remove a couple of needles.  You do this by unscrewing the white collar from the back of the pen to reveal the needle compartment:

Then you can just slide the extra needles out one at a time -

...and get to work shaping up the leg!

So, now she has two legs!  She is all finished actually, and I will put up the rest of the process is another post (hopefully later today).

A Happy Mother's Day to all Moms out there - and especially to my mom, and aunt.  The women I share this blog with constantly set an example for me of the way I should try to live my life - be happy, be encouraging, work for the things you believe in, do what you love and CREATE!  Sounds like a marvelous plan!  xoxo

Mollie Makes Me Needle Felt!

My mother has introduced me to a wonderful crafting magazine - Mollie Makes. It is published in the UK, and not always easy to come by here. Luckily, it is available as a digital edition on my iPad - the picture quality is great and you can zoom in to see the tiniest details. The moment I saw the most recent issue's cover

I knew I had to make one of the adorable felted dogs. Because, 1) you can never have enough crafty hobbies, and 2) I already have a lifetime's supply of roving (thank you Etsy) just waiting for me to find new and creative ways to use it up!

Any excuse to shop for new supplies will do - after poking around on Amazon and doing a bit of research on Ravelry, I decided on the following three items:

The mat is a Green Soy Needle Felting Foam Mat from Mielkes Fiber Arts - HIGHLY recommended. Eco-friendly and a super smooth finished piece! I also tried the bristly mats from Clover but I noticed that the fiber sticks to it like mad, and it creates a lot of "fuzz" on the outside of the felted piece. I think the Clover Mats would be great for applique felting though! The needle felting tools are both from Clover, and are perfect. I use the green 5-needle tool when I'm getting started - when the fiber is still very loose and before the real shaping begins. The pink 3-needle pen is perfect for the detail work - fine shaping and attaching bits - it is also dead easy to remove a couple of the needles and turn it into a 1-needle pen. So, here is my wee little doggie, under way:

He's a bit squidgy on the inside still - like one of those molten cake desserts - but if I firm it up much more he's going to get teenier and teenier.  Maybe this is normal for needle felting?  Anywho, still one leg to go!

And ears...Mini Photo Tutorial on these to follow! I'm amazed at how fun it is, and how quickly I've become just a little addicted. Sculpting, as an art form, has always looked impossibly daunting - the talent involved in seeing a finished work inside a lump of raw material, be it stone or clay or fiber. This little dog is designed by Gretel Parker and she has a wonderfully sweet and whimsical sensibility, and clearly a great deal of talent.  So thank you Gretel and Mollie for pointing me in a new direction!

Mollie Makes Kits - Make a Little Fascinator!

There is a new craft magazine on the market, Mollie Makes, from the UK. I found the first issue a few months ago at my favorite Memphis bookstore. But then I had trouble finding the second and third issues, and it was purely by luck that I found them. So, I decided to subscribe. It is a little expensive, to have it shipped from England, but well worth it! A new issue arrives in my mail box every month, and a small craft kit is included with each issue! Too cute.

Issue #4 had a kit which included 3 small pieces of felt, about 2' of cording, and 2 buttons. It was for making a necklace, but I decided I should make something quite different, a tiny fascinator!



The base for the hat is heavy cardboard (a little heaver than a cereal box, but not corrugated cardboard). I covered the top of the hat base with 1/2 of one of the felt pieces in the kit. The sides of the hat base are covered with a vintage tape I had in my stash.

The pieces of felt in the kit were kind of small, so I had to figure out how to make dimensional flowers from such small pieces. I tried it on scrap felt first. For flower #1 I thought maybe I could make a 'rose' by cutting the felt in a spiral, and running a gathering stitch along the inside spiral edge. The gathering stitch is about 1/4".



Flower #2 was cut from the same piece of felt I used to cover the top of the cardboard base, so I only had enough left for about a 3 1/2" circle. Snip the edges all around. Run a gathering thread around the middle, pull up the gathers, and fold the flower in half, kind of off-set.


Flower #3. Cut 2 strips of petal shapes. Run a gathering thread along the base, placing the stitches so each petal will fold in half at the base, giving the petals a slightly cupped shape.

Glue flowers to hat. I use Beacon Fabri-Tac for gluing fabric to fabric.

Back view of hat. I used the little buttons that came with the kit to decorate the back of the fascinator and to tie the elastic used to hold the hat in place. I poked holes in the sides of the hat and threaded the elastic through to the inside of the hat where it is held in place with a knot. I even used the 2' of cording to add an inch or so of macrame over the elastic band.