Felt Rose Tutorial

Felt Roses are one of the easiest flowers to make. They're cute on wreaths, head bands, make cute hair clips etc... So here's how it's done. And sorry my pictures aren't the best and I could've included a little more detailed step by step but these will have to do because I had no one to help with the photography part.

FELT ROSES

Materials Needed:

1. Felt
2. Hot glue gun
3. Hot glue sticks
4. Scissors 

 

 Directions:

1. Cut a circle out of your felt. It doesn't need to be perfect and it can be whatever size you want as well.
   After you've cut your circle cut a spiral into it. As you can see I pre-cut a bunch of felt into different sizes for varied size flowers, this makes it easier to work through them faster versus doing them one by one.

2. You start your flower from the smaller pointed side. You will put about an inch long bead of hot glue from the point in along the bottom edge of the felt. Then you will fold the pointed edge into the glue.

3. Once your point is folded in you will continue to roll your felt like so in the picture below. I lay down about an inch of hot glue at a time so I can turn a full circle of petals before having to glue again.

 4. You will continue this process through all the material. You can get creative and make the petals look more unique as you go by folding the edges over and hot gluing them down as well, this gives it a little more realistic look and hides some of the raw edges. Although you don't really have to worry about raw edges with felt since it stays together but you will want to make sure you have decent scissors you're cutting with or it does mangle the felt.

 This is another technique I use to get more of a realistic look in my flowers. I lay down an inch of glue and then before laying the petal down I pinch part of the felt together let that dry for a second and continue to lay down the rest of the glued area.

 Here's another view on the pinched effect above. Make sure to let it dry before moving on or it falls apart.

 Continue all the steps and keep rotating your flower. Feel free to jump back and forth between the different folds as well. That is what I did in this flower.

 5. Once you have come to the end of your spiral where the round circle part is you will cover it in hot glue. This closes in the bottoms and also gives an extra layer of glue to all your petals so they don't fall apart. Press the glued circle into the bottom of the flower and let dry.

 It will look something like this when you are done. If any pieces feel loose you can easily go back at this time and put dabs of glues in areas where you feel it's needed.

 6. This step is optional depending if you want leaf petals or not. I took a scrap piece of green felt and cut leaf shapes out. Once again they don't have to be perfect, I free handed mine.

 This is what my leaves look like. I went with three, that's how many I usually put on my flowers. I always like an odd amount of leafs.

 7. Find the placement for your leaves and the glue them to the bottom of your flower. I just put on dot of hot glue on the tip of my leaf because you don't want it to spill over and onto your flower petals.

 And this is how the flower turns out in the end. I use my flowers for various things such as hair clips for little girls or I put them on holiday wreaths... They're cute and can go on just about anything and they only take about 10 minutes.

Indians & Cowgirls

Ok so as seen in my last posts I made my oldest an Indian costume for Halloween. So to go along with it I decided to dress my infant as the cowgirl. This costume was also cheap and easy to make.

Materials:
1. Long sleeve onesie (Walmart for $3)
2. Two red bandanas (Walmart for $2)
3. Blue filigree embossed felt and yellow felt (Walmart $3)
4. White ruffle (Walmart $3)
5. Hat (Build-a-bear $5)
6. Hot glue gun
7. Hot glue sticks
8. Sewing machine
9. Black puffy paint
10. Elastic

*Note previous to making this costume I already owned a lot of the things needed to make this costume, so it's possible it could cost you a lot more than it did for me.

How to make costume:

1. I cut out the sheriff star (actually my husband did, he was stoked to hep with the costumes) and wrote the name with puffy paint so it could dry.
2. I cut out the vest pieces. I simply laid my felt down on the indie and eyeballed it and once I had one side cut I reversed it and placed it down on the felt and re-cut the exact same shape.
3. I hot glued the vest down. I tucked the top of the vest under the shoulder caps on the onesie so it'd still be easy to get the baby in and out of it. The I hot glued the sheriff badge to the vest. After everything was set I used puffy paint to make stitch lines around the edge of the vest for extra detail. Then set this aside to dry, this piece of the costume is done.
4. I unfolded one of my bandanas and cut right along the already existing crease (the longest one) giving me two matching rectangles.
5. I folded down the cut/raw edge about an inch and pinned it. Do this on both pieces. Then sew a seam about a 1/4 inch in all the way across and about a 1/4 inch down sew another seam parallel to the one before. Make sure you are back stitching at the beginning and end to make sure your piece holds together. Do this two both pieces.
6. This is where you add the ruffle. Cut two strips the length of each bandana pattern. Then pin the along bottom edge of each piece of your skirt. See each ruffle to skirt.
7. Depending on size of child cut a strip of elastic to now feed through the lining you just made. For my infant I chose to go with elastic about 2/3 of the length of the bandana strip. Make sure to cut one strip of elastic for each side. Then stick of safety pin in the end of your elastic strip (this makes it easier to feed through) and feed elastic through casing. Make sure not to let go of ends or your elastic will disappear into the casing. Once I finished this part I did a quick stitch going through each side of the elastic vertically to hold them in place. Do this to both pieces of bandana.
8. Match skirt pieces up facing right side in. Pin each side about an inch in evenly down the sides. Then sew a zig zag stitch straight down the sides making sure to back stitch at the top and bottom and making sure to run through the elastic as well. Do this to both sides.
9. Trim up excess material and strings hanging but make sure not to cut to close so you don't cut material or stitching. Turn inside out and ta-da! Your skirt is done.
10. Take your second bandana and cut one of the corners off. I eyeballed mine at what I thought would be big enough to tie like a bib around my daughter. Then fold over raw edge and sew a seam.

And your costume is all done! Easy as that! So here's how it came out!

Toddler Indian Costume

Alright so I got the head band done this evening and was able to trick my daughter into taking some cute pictures by bribing her with red vines, haha! So here's what the costume looks like on, and man am I pleased. I'm so excited for Halloween!

Fairytales & Fables

Ok so I've been working on a set that I want to paint. I'm doing a set on fairytales and fables. But I'm doing these in my own version. A more adult take on them I guess you could call it. So far I have only gotten a few faces drawn for two of them. I will be painting these when I get them all done and selling them as a set.

Anyway here's a sneak peak of what I have going on.

Baby Costumes

So I'm making my girls their costumes this year because most costumes are so outrageous in price and are so cheaply made. Plus when I was a girl my mom made all my costumes and I loved it, So it's definitely a tradition I'm looking forward to carrying on with my girls. I chose to do an Indian and Cowgirl this year because my husband and his sister have a childhood photo of them as an Indian and Cowgirl for Halloween when they were young and I thought it'd be cute to replicate their costumes. So far I have gotten the dress done for the Indian costume with my older daughter will be wearing. It was very easy to make and I spent under $10 for my materials. Mind you I had a few things before making the costume such as a sewing machine, thread, hot glue gun, hot glue sticks, and ribbon which could make your project more expensive if you don't already own them.

For this project I purchased:

1. Brown fleece- which only cost $2.47 a yard from wal-mart. I chose to go with this material since it tends to be a bit colder during Halloween.
2. Felt- which cost 23 cents a piece. I used brown and red for the detail on the neck line. Which with the felt all I used to apply the pieces together and onto the dress was hot glue.
3. Fringe- I got the fringe from wal-mart for $2.50 and i sewed that part onto the dress to make sure it was secure.
4. Ribbon- I used black and turquoise ribbon for the design around the neckline and along the fringe on the bottom of the dress to give it a little more detail.

Steps to making the dress:

1. Step one, I used a dress that fits my daughter as a reference to cut out the material. I cut out the front and back shapes. Dipping in a little bit on the front piece so the neck line wouldn't be to tight. When you're cutting out the shapes along your dress reference don't worry about cutting them directly up against the dress. It's probably better if you leave an extra inch all the way around your pattern because you will lose some of it sewing your dress together.
2. Step two, I sewed the zipper into the back pattern of the dress. I cut a slit directly down the middle of the back the length of the zipper. Then I pinned the zipper with the material folded in a bit so there wont be an ugly seam hanging around the zipper. Once my zipper was pinned I sewed it down. Most of you probably already know this but if you're new to sewing make sure at the beginning and end don't forget to back stitch so your seams do not come undone.
3. Step three, I sewed my exposed edges of the dress. This would be the bottom of the front and back pattern, the neckline and the arm holes. Don't worry about the tops of the sleeves or sides of the dress yet cause that will be taken care of when you sew the patterns together. 
4. Step four, My dress has a zig zag pattern sewed into the front and back just for a little extra design. It's very hard to see it in these pictures but if you choose to do that design now is the time for that. All I did was freehand zig zags across the whole front and back patterns along the bottom.
5. Step five, I made my design for the neck line. I cut out the shape I wanted on my neckline with the brown felt and then I used ribbon and hot glued my first design down. Then I cut out triangles also felt and glued those in between my ribbon. 
6. Step six, I hot glued all my pieces that were being attached to the dress. First I did the neckline. My pattern was already made so all I had to do was glue it down along the neck line. I left the bottom of the pattern open to glue down last because I was tucking fringe underneath the bottom. So this is when the fringe goes in and I hot glued this piece of fringe since it was going to be covered with the pattern anyway. Once my fringe was in place I glued down the rest of the pattern and then I used a piece of black ribbon to hide the seams and glued that over the top. After this was done I glued my turquoise ribbon to the bottom of the dress right above the fringe. 
7. Step seven, Sew the front and back pieces together! Place your pieces right side in and pin the dress down the sides about a 1/4 inch in sew down the sides making sure to back stitch at the top and bottom so your dress doesn't come apart. After the sides you will do the same thing with the straps at the top.   
8. Step eight, Lastly after the dress was all done I used orange puffy paint and added the dots on the neckline pattern. Make sure to do this step last so the dress can sit and dry for a good couple of hours.

This dress was very easy and fun to make. I'm in no way a great sewer. I teach myself mostly everything I know or have picked it up from watching my mom when I was a kid. If you can work a sewing machine and know how to use a hot glue gun you can make this dress.

I still have a headband and bow and arrow to make as well. I will be posting more pictures in a couple days when I have everything together and actually on my little girl so you can get an idea of what it looks like.

 

Catch Up!

So I'm finally playing catch up. This last week I've been busy with my kids and redoing my blog I haven't had much time for posts. But a little later today I will be posting latest projects and ideas. I went and go a notebook the other day so all my projects could be a little more organized since I'm always losing the loose sheets of paper I jot them down on! It's helping me prioritize the order of things I want to get done first because I have a terrible habit of doing 100 projects at the same time. This last week I started on my girls costumes for Halloween. My oldest is going to be an Indian and the youngest a cowgirl. So far I got the dress done for the Indian costume done and will be posting pictures of it later so keep your eyes posted.