Guest Post: Felt pumpkins from Artfully Caroline

Yay! Caroline is here today! In case you're new, Caroline is my bloggy friend turned real life friend once we found out we lived 20 minutes away from each other. We get together almost every month to craft, she is my {trading posts} partner! She's always full of fantastic ideas, and this one is no different.

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Good morning!

My name is Caroline. My little blog is called:

 

I love to cook, sew and craft for my home, family and friends. Creating keeps me sane and happy in an otherwise crazy stressful busy life.  Here are a few of my latest creations:

 

As you may know Amie and I are also neighbors in real life and get to visit each other and craft together every so often. So I'm thrilled to be visiting Amie's blog today to show you how to make this cute addition to your fall decor: 

With a bit of orange fleece and some scraps of green crushed velvet, I sewed my first pumpkin last year.

For this project you will need

- 1/4 yard of orange fleece or felt

- Stuffing material

- Thread and needle 

- A sewing machine that doesn't cringe about thick fabric (my old Singer would have been a bad candidate but my faithful Pfaff just went along with it).

• Cut 6 ( roughly 7 inch long by 2 wide) wedges of the orange fleece/felt
• Fold in half lengthwise and stitch a 2 inch pintuck on both ends 

 

• This will define the shape of the pumpkin i.e  flatten the top and bottom
• This is how it look from the wrong side (Left) and the right side

 

• Sew 2 wedges together wrong side togethers (i.e. pinktucks outside) 

 

• Add a third wedge - You have now a half pumpkin

• Sew the second half pumpkin then attach the two halves on one edge
• Cut a piece 2x 4 inch piece of green fleece, felt or crushed velvet
• Fold in half and attach to the top of your pumpkin

  

• Stitch the last seams with the pumpkin inside out leaving a 2 inch opening
• Turn the pumpkin right side out and stuff it
• Stitch the opening
• Stitch some ridges to the stem 

• Optional : add a leaf to your stem

Et voila !

Super easy and cute 

Thanks Amie for having me over . 

I hope you have a wonderful day and a fantastic fall.

Tradings Posts- Fall wreathes

I know, I'm a bit late on this one! It all happened during my bloggy break. You should read {Caroline's post} because she took wayyy more pictures than I did! Actually...now that I'm rereading her post it will totally put my post to shame, so just save yourself some time and hop on over to see all of it. And I only took pictures of the finished product. Fail Amie.

I blame pertussis. Stupid whooping cough.

Anyway! After a long summer hiatus we finally were able to get together to make some wreathes! I honestly can't remember the last time I made a wreath...I'm not really a wreath person. It might be because I don't have a front door on account of living in a basement but that's beside the point.

This is Caroline's. Isn't it GORGEOUS? She used a fabulous braiding technique and threw that beautiful purple in with her fall colors. I helped her turn a lot of those fabric tubes inside out, so I will hereby claim this wreath to be 20% mine. ;)

This one is mine, a yarn wrapped wreath! This took so. much. yarn. Oh my goodness, Caroline and I were twisting and gluing and twisting and gluing and twisting and gluing until our fingers ached! I do like the result though, its so textural and I love all the colors together!

The best part? It's made out of a $1.50 pipe insulator from Home Depot. Yup! Even though I knew we were making wreathes, I somehow blanked on bringing my wreath form. I remembered the yarn and the felt, but not the wreath! So Caroline took me to Home Depot and we picked up the pipe insulator. Add some duct tape, some batting, and a whole lotta yarn, and BAM! A fall wreath!

Have you made any wreathes lately? Leave me a link!

Headband Week- The big bow headband

First off, I must admit that this wasn't my idea at all. When LMM posted her {headband challenge} she included some headband inspiration. There were some cute headbands, but THIS.

This. This one from {much love illy} I LOVED. A backwards headband! (Though it doesn't really look like a headband...ah yes. I dug around a little bit and it is in fact a {hair clip} from her Etsy shop) I loved the idea and borrowed it to make my own headband.

Loooove it! I scaled mine down a bit so it would be a little more subtle. And it's felt, I love me some felt because I am lazy and don't like finishing edges.

I made it in pretty much the exact same way I made the {lace bow}, but we'll go over it again since that was like more than six months ago.

You will need:

• Elastic headband
• Scissors
• Felt
• Glue gun
• Ruler, maybe. I didn't use one. I hate measuring. 

Cut a strip of felt out. I think this was like 3 inches wide and 8 inches long? Maybe nine? I hate measuring. I just cut and go. Anyway, glue the ends together to make a loop.

Squirt a little dab of glue in the center of your loop, on the non glued side. Be quick!

Fold the loop over the little dab of glue. This will create that little pleat in the middle of the bow.

See how the middle is all nice and glued? Awesome. Fold back the non glued part and...

Cover with another strip of felt. So easy! I think this strip was 1 inch bye 4 inches? Maybe? I should have made it a little thinner.

Glue onto your headband. Make sure that the bow is going on the same direction as the headband, otherwise when you put it on it will look funny.

And slap that baby on. I feel like this headband is kind of like a mullet, except it's sporty in the front and cute in the back. I love how you can still see a bit of the bow poking out! I think this would be so adorable with super short cropped hair. Someone should cut off all their hair, make this, take a picture, and send it to me. Because I am way too scared to chop off all my hair.

Linking up {here}

What headband projects have YOU been working on? I can't wait to see them!

The button belt {a tutorial}

I made this a few weeks ago for a Pinterest Challenge over at {Better Life Bags}. My inspiration?

{via the swell life}

My version?

Love it! And it was way easier than I thought it would be to make a belt! A little time consuming with all those buttons, but still simple.

Yeah, it's awesome. It's fun and interesting and made a tiny dent in my button stash. Wanna make one too? We could be twinies!

You will need:

• Lots and lots and lots of buttons (I had all of my button organizers spread out but they didn't fit in the picture)
• Long strip of felt
• Inch wide satin ribbon (I think I used...a yardish. 18 inches one each end of the belt)
• Scrap of faux leather
• Glue gun with at least five extra glue sticks
• Scissors

I was a little too quick for myself and started working on it before taking pictures. First thing you need to do is cut a strip of felt 2-3 inches wide and long enough to wrap around your body minus an inch or two. You need room to tie the bow. So if you want it around your waist, measure around your waist and subtract and inch or two to leave room for the bow. Same if you want it around your hips. THEN you cut these two faux leather rectangles for the ends. Make sure they are just as wide as your belt. Mine were like....2" x 6"? I hate measuring.

Cut a small slit right through the middle of the rectangle just barely wide enough to thread the ribbon through. Do this for both pieces.

See how nicely it fits? Hot glue the ribbon down.

Liberally glue the inside of your leather rectangles and sandwich the felt in between. Do this for both sides and in less than 5 minutes you've got yourself a belt!

Then glue, and glue, and glue, and glue all those buttons on. I chose mostly pale colored buttons in neutral themes and designs, with a few funky ones thrown in. I wanted it to be able to wear it with multiple outfits.

Ok, maybe I had a lot of funky ones in there. I just love buttons! I used over 100 and my stash doesn't even look like it has been touched.

I've really got to get a picture of me sporting all the button crap I've made! That would be one intense pictures. Hmmm...what other crap can I make with buttons....

Linking up {here}

Tutorial Tuesday- Zipper flower cuff

In case you missed it, here is the guest post I did last week on Vibrant Designs!

Are you totally ready for spring? Some of you lucky folks might be blessed with year round warmth, but I live in Maryland so far it's still cold here. I've been craving some springtime bliss, so I decided to spring up my accessories with this!

This cute zipper flower cuff definitely causes me to daydream of the smell of fresh cut flowers. Mission accomplished! Wanna make one of your own?

You will need:

• Felt
• Spring colored zippers
• Fun buttons
• Glue gun
• Scissors (both pinking shears and embroidery scissors)
• Needle and thread (not pictured)
• Disappearing ink pen (not pictured)

Got it all?

First, we gotta make the cuff. Cut out a strip of felt two inches wide with your pinking shears. Feel free to use your straight scissors here, but I liked the interest the pinking shears added.

Wrap it around your wrist, and add an inch to the measurement. Cut your felt strip to size, your wrist measurement plus an inch. You could easily just measure your wrist measurement, add an inch, and then cut your felt to size, but I was too lazy to go find my measuring tape.

Dig through your buttons and find a cute one. Using a needle and thread, sew it onto one end of your felt strip.

Next we're going to make a button hole. Wrap your cuff around your wrist again, and overlap the button.

It's kind of hard to see, so hopefully I can explain this well! Press the felt on the button and find the edge of it. Make a tiny dot on with your disappearing ink pen. Feel around on the other side, find the edge of the button, and make another dot. These dots should be more on the inside of the button, you want the button hole to be smaller than the size of the button! Keep in mind you can always make the button hold bigger, but to make it smaller you have to bust out the needle and thread again and that's just too much work to even think about!

Use the embroidery scissors to carefully cut in between the two dots. Remember, it's way better to make the button hole too small than too big!

Now you've got your cuff! I would totally wear this as is, but like I said, I'm desperate for spring time loveliness. Time to embellish!

You're going to get six petals from your zipper. The shorter your zipper, the smaller your petals will be.

And measure it. (Yeah, had to get up to get a ruler. Ruined my lazy plans.) Divide that number in three and mark with the disappearing ink pen again.

Unzip the zipper and carefully cut on your marks. You'll end up with six little zipper pieces.

To make the petals, shoot a little bit of glue from your gun on one end.

And fold the other end over. It's all petal-y now! Repeat with the other five pieces.

And you'll end up with six little petals. Huzzah! Set them aside for now.

To make the vine-y things, I just unzipped a green zipper and cut off the ends.

Fold one end under, and randomly glue the green zipper in a zig zaggy line across the length of the cuff.

Like so! Then you can glue your petals on! (I'm getting a little ahead of myself here.)

Glue your other petals on and add a cute button for the center.

And proudly wear that baby out! Ahhh, I can already feel the spring breeze on my face. :)

Don't forget to check out all the fun places I link up! (Even though I'm a total linky slacker lately)