Miniature Felt Napoleon Hat

I recently joined a little 'club' called "Six Months of Softies". Basically it's six soft toy patterns from six different designers, but they are new exclusive surprise patterns revealed and delivered once a month for six months, so it's exciting too! I'm a sucker for soft toys, what can I say? (Read about it here, if you are interested.)

The first pattern is from Shiny Happy World, where Wendi Gratz designs patterns specifically for beginners and also has a heap of video tutorials to go with her patterns. So when reading through the pattern, there will be links to videos as you might need them. You can ignore the stuff you already know, and check out the video for extra help on stuff you aren't good at or familiar with. I've picked up some good tips. I also love the way she writes. Cute little comments lie among the instructions to give you a little laugh.

The pattern is an elephant and a mouse, called Napoleon and Josephine. I've actually mostly made the elephant, but I need more stuffing, so I'll show you that one later. For now, I have the mouse.

As you can see, I decided to give him a little hat.

Want to make your own little felt bicorne for your mouse or another little toy?

It's super easy to make. Slightly more tricky to place, depending on the ears of your toy! Here's how:

1. Start with a circle of felt that is a suitable size for your toy. The diameter should be "shoulder width" or wider for a more exaggerated look. (I say "shoulder width" in inverted commas because often toys have no shoulders. This mouse doesn't even have arms.) Basically there will be two folds in the circle, making two segments slightly smaller than a semi-circle for the sides, and a narrow strip in the middle. Kind of like a stand-and-stuff taco.

2. Fold into taco shape, and pinch the sides in and fold them down a bit. Now, I had a go at actually steaming mine to help it keep that shape. I used a cheap craft felt from my stash, so it was only moderately successful, but it might be worth it, especially if you are making a larger hat. You can see my improvised blocking set up in these pictures.

I knew I was keeping that oversized novelty Christmas pencil for a reason.

Just like a taco!

If you haven't steamed any felt before, the idea is to hold it in steam and shape it when the steam has made it a bit more pliable, then keep it in place. Holding it above a kettle is the easiest way.

3. Embellish. I went with a little button and the edges of some wire-edged ribbon in gold and red. Google up some Napoleon pictures for plenty of ideas. Some paintings seemed to have a gold trim, others just a little cockade. Whatever you fancy. Googling other bicorne hats (or chapeau bras) will give you other embellishment ideas.

4. If necessary, also put a stitch in on the other side to hold the shape.

5. Attaching is a variable process depending on your toy. For the mouse here, I used a ladder-whip-mutant stitch to attach it behind one ear, across the top of the head, and in front of the other ear. Wiggling and squishing was required.

6. Celebrate with some fresh banana bread.

Step 6 is the best!

Now... who else can I put a little hat on?

Product Photography, a Craftsy Addiction, and a Bunny

So first, Craftsy. I went first because of the patterns, then started following the blog, but I was keen on the idea of the classes too. I have quite an addiction to learning new crafts even though I don't have time for my current ones. Having these lessons join me in the comfort of my own home whenever it suits me is pretty darn appealing.

So courtesy of a 50% off sale and no willpower, I bought my first class. It's called "Shoot It: A Product Photography Primer". So far I've watched the bits about colour, composition, style and such, and today I'm sharing with you some pictures I took as part of the first homework assignment (the best kind of assignment - one that no one but you cares if you actually do the work).

The homework is really just to take photos and start playing with what works and doesn't, but particularly considering composition.

The subject today is a bunny Lovey Dovey that is waiting for the birth of its future owner next month. Its made from white and pink bamboo fleece and has a little embroidered face. (I previously made the elephant version of the Lovey Dovey)

My first ever hat features in this next photo. I have sure improved a lot since then, but it makes a nice photo prop.

So back to the classes. They are basically structured as a set of videos that you can watch and re-watch as you feel like it, and they stay available to you forever. You can add notes so you can find bits you want to refer to later. Then there's course materials like notes and resource lists and stuff. The best bit, and what sets the classes above other online resources, is that you can ask the teacher questions and get their feedback on whatever you need. Other class participants can help you out too, and you get to see their questions and answers. Then people share pictures of their completed projects too.

I've since started another class too, but I'll talk about that in another post. There's plenty more classes on Craftsy that I'd love to get into, but I must be a good girl and finish the ones I've started first!

Soft Toy Pattern Review: Whale by DIY Fluffies

I was keeping a covetous eye on the soft toy patterns by DIY Fluffies on etsy for a while, and it was the Zombie Bear that finally spurred me into action. But since I was buying, I got a bundle of 3 patterns to "save money". The others were the whale and the elephant.

Mariska's patterns are beautifully set out with adorable illustrations. The whale is pretty straightforward in theory, but curvy, so a bit tricky. The recommended skill level is intermediate, and I would agree. Experience with clipping curved seams will help a lot.

Seam allowances are not included, which is not the best arrangement for me, as my skill at adding them in evenly is not great (the fins are most notably quite different sizes on mine!).

My eco-whale is made from an unwanted tie-dyed apron project that a student left behind at school to be thrown in the bin. The stuffing is a mix of Innergreen's corn fibre fill and fabric scraps, including the left-over apron. I'm finding that as long as you keep the ball of scraps in the centre and surround it with the regular fill, the cuddliness is not impaired (especially on a very round bosy like this one).

I love the shape of this whale, especially the curve up of the tail. Also, the shape at the front reminds me of a soft toy whale I had as a kid. He was yellow and white fur fabric and we got him at a school fete jumble sale. His name was Belly Whale. I feel like there was this period in my life when I let having no space to store soft toys get in the way of my love for them. I miss Belly Whale, and many others who went off to Vinnies. I hope they are still being loved somewhere.

Soft Toy Pattern Review: Naked Frog

 
Well, at the moment it is naked. And in the magazine it is called either "swimsuit frog" or "ballet frog" depending which version you make, so mine is clearly currently "naked frog".

The one on the right is a backpack. Apparently it's ok to be naked if you are a backpack.

It's the Australian Women's Weekly "Handmade" from November/December 1998.

I picked it up at an op-shop, drawn in by the Christmas delights it promised, but it was the frogs that sold me. 50 cents well spent.

So, with a need to motivate myself back into craft after my trip, and with miles of pale green fleece left over from the elephant, I got to it.

The pieces were confusing at first, and covered with markings that I largely ignored, but it came together pretty easily. Probably the only tricky bit was sewing the front and back together with those GIGANTIC and already stuffed legs attached and having to be kept inside and not caught in the seam. I basically had to squeeze them through the opening as I sewed. The instructions said, about leaving the opening for turning: You will need to pull the Legs out through this opening, so don't make it too small. What they needed to say was: Basically hardly sew any of this seam.

Want to know what a frog looks like without eyes? This is it.

I was tempted to skip the rather complicated-looking eye sockets and just make some googly eyes, but I had already cut out the pieces, so I gave them a go.

Worth it. I left off the embroidered smile, as its head/chin seam was already very smile-like and subtle.

So now we come to the issue. How am I going to dress it? The limb-to-body joins aren't very elegant and in any case my legs aren't in the same place on the body, so something's got to cover that all up.

I like the old-fashioned swimsuit idea, it reminds me of a Frog and Toad story, but I think I'd like to try something different.

 

What outfit should my little frog wear?

Pinterest Progress - Button Pictures

All quiet from me on the blog lately - I've been getting married! More on that soon, but here's something from before that I hadn't published yet.

I have a large tin of buttons, as I may have mentioned previously. I want to use them up, but a lot of craft projects seem to require specific colours, often bright colours, and I don't have many of them. I have a lot of black, white and brown buttons. So one thing I found on Pinterest was button artworks.

So I had a look at the tutorial for the Button Elephant by bustedbutton and decided I would have a go at it.

I decided to make a badger, because I love badgers, and because it exactly suited the colours I have. I painted the background with acrylic paint and in rather more than the recommended "wash" that she does, but that's what I happened to have out at the time to paint some table-tennis-ball eyeballs (more on that in a future post).

Then I hot-glue-gunned away! It was pretty hard to do, especially because I had small areas of colour and not as many small buttons as I'd like, and because my glue gun left lots of trails of glue strands everywhere that had to be picked off. And I had to redo the eyes 3 times because they kept being in the wrong position or angle or something.

Overall I am pretty happy with how it turned out and it was a very quick project.

The thing that baffles me is that I can use SO MANY buttons and the tin seems just as full. I will need to make a lot more button animal pictures. Anyone want one?

Oh no not another potential hobby!!

My most amazing bridesmaids, or "Matrons of Awesome" as I also like to call them, threw me a superfantabulous Hens party yesterday. We had a cupcake-decorating class at my friend's house, followed by dinner, and it was an inspiring way to spend a day. I love learning new things, and as always I got very excited by it and have lots of probably-doomed plans to do a lot more of this.

We each made a monkey, a lion, a zebra and a cookie-monster face. In my house, we have already eaten cookie monster!

This is my monkey and lion. My monkey's head was too small and his neck was too long, so I gave him a scarf. Scarves proved popular with several monkeys suffering the same condition. This is almost the perfect camera angle to hide the bad bits of my lion.

My zebra:

All four of mine, including a crumb-covered cookie monster:

Here are Rhiannon's:

Here are the rest that I got photos of:

 

Best Hens night ever!