Come Join My Fun FREE Felt Halloween Ornament Pattern Club!

I'm a bit behind in starting this Halloween Pattern Club so I've dropped it from 6 ornaments to just 4 ornaments so you can get them done in time for Halloween.

 

What is this Halloween pattern club and how does it work? 

This is a fun and FREE Felt Halloween Ornament Pattern Club. There are 4 easy Halloween ornament patterns that use the same basic colors and can all be made using only 6 - 9“ x 12” sheets of felt.

• First you need to sign up for the club. Sign up at end of post.
   
• Then you'll get an email with the first pattern and an introduction of how the club will work.

The first pattern you will receive will be the Candy Corn ornament, then 4 days later you will receive the second pattern, the 4 days after that you'll receive the 3rd pattern, then 4 days after that you will receive the 4th and last pattern.

What comes with these patterns?

You'll get an digital PDF with:

• A supply list.
   
• Easy to follow step by step instructions with photos.
   
• A pattern template to print, pin to felt and cut the felt out.
   
• Graphics showing other color and facial expression options.
   
• A template at 100% of the details to sew on the ornament and other important details.
   
• A stitch guide and my 2 favorite places to buy felt if you need to, plus how to contact me if you have questions about anything.

What are all the Halloween ornament patterns? 

The 4 Halloween patterns are:

• A Goofy Candy Corn Ornament.
   
• A Happy Flying Bat Ornament.
   
• A Fun Frankenstein Face Ornament.
   
• A Black Cat Face Ornament.

Patterns one and two in real felt.

First 3 patterns. One more to go! 

All 4 patterns! 

There is also an amazing fun felt supply giveaway too!

  

The first 10 people who sign up for the Felt Halloween Ornament Club will get entered into a drawing for:

• A pack of 6 different color sheets of the 9" x 12" wool blend felt I used for this club.
   
• One skein of embroidery thread to match all the felt colors needed to complete the club.
   
• An embroidery needle.
   
• And 4 pre-cut pieces of 1/4 white ribbon for hanging the ornaments. 

This felt pack is from busylittlebird.com 

and you can buy all the colors together in a pack just like this here

UPDATE: Linda won this giveaway and her supplies have arrived so I hope she's crafting!

SIGN UP FOR HALLOWEEN FELT ORNAMENT PATTERN CLUB HERE!

I hope you enjoy making these as much as I enjoyed designing them for you!

Friday Finds: 6 Of The Best Whimsical Tea Related Items You Will Adore

Today is the 358th Anniversary of Tea in England. Personally I'm a coffee drinker but my mom loves tea and my brother is some kind of tea connoisseur so I thought this was the perfect post to honor their love of tea.

 

I went around and found the cutest tea related things to share with you today! 

 

 

 

 Plusheez

Happy squishy tea bag plush! Adorable for home decor, perhaps a couch pillow of a tea loving friend or family member. Such happy kawaii faces!

 

Little Dear

Adorable felt pattern for making your own felt tea, coffee or hot chocolate. It could be a pin cushion or a desk decoration or a play food for your child's mini play kitchen. Look at that charming little lemon slice and dollop of whipped cream!

 

 Hollyslay

Whimsical child's hand painted tea set. This delightful set would make for hours of imaginary play. I'm in love with the fun bright colors and that it can be personalized too. Every boy and girl should have a tea set. I actually learned table manners by playing with mine as a child. My brother served tea to his trucks, action figures and plush toys.

Crafty Cornish Maids

This is a Hedgehog tea cosy!!!! Such a darling idea and great for keeping your tea pot hot. Great idea and cosies come in all shapes and sizes and characters. Makes me want to get a tea pot and a cosy just because it's so darn precious! The cuteness factor is about 100 here. Now I wish I drank tea!

A2D Creations 

 Cute song lyric tea towels, I thought they were so funny! In the US we have dish towels which are absorbent printed towels. I'm sure the use is basically the same but tea towels are just more fun and seem to be more pieces of art. My Australian cousin sent me a tea towel for xmas and it's too beautiful to use, I'm going to frame it and hang it on the wall.

 Alison Appleton Studio

Wow a rubber ducky tea infuser! Such a darling little thing! My experience with tea infusers is that weird clampy spoon with holes in it or the metal acorn looking thing. Tea bags are huge here in the US so you don't see many tea infusers unless you are a connoisseur of fine teas or maybe a Hipster. This cutie floats around in your cup steeping your tea and looking like it's in a tub, so stinking cute!

Here's a bonus Free Tea related find.

 Sew Kidding 

 Sew Kidding's link will take you to her FREE printable tea themed Wall Art and note cards. She's a favorite of mine and her printables are so fabulously cute!

I hope you enjoyed this post. I'll be doing these once a month now since I have so many other amazing felt things to share with you! 

Do You Want To Make Felt Crafts But Don't Know How Or Where To Start?

Confused about what you even need to do to start making felt crafts? 

Well of course you are confused! This is all new to you so how would you even know? Crafts have to be taught the same as scuba diving needs to be taught. Crafting with felt is a skill just like many other types of skills.

I thought I'd start a couple part series on felt crafting, because felt is my life and I love to teach what I know.

Felt doesn't have to be your life too but I can give you some tips, tricks and ideas to help you jump in or wade slowly, whichever you prefer and enjoy felt crafting!


Every week I'll post a new part to this felt series. The whole series will cover:

• Types of felt
  
• How to properly iron felt - sort of already did this post
• Tools needed
  
• Tips and tricks
  
• Gluing vs sewing
• The most commonly used stitches in felt crafts
• Skills to learn to get the most out of your craft experience
• How to find good patterns

To make this series even better there will be some FREE PDF's to download to help you along the way.

I'm currently making a couple of downloadable checklists, supply lists and links to stitching videos to do all I can to help you along your crafty way!

The first download I'm making available to you is this informative 8 page e-book I wrote it to help you know what to look for and how to find good quality patterns. I enjoyed writing it and I hope you'll enjoy reading it.

Click the link above or right here and you'll get this FREE guide right in you inbox.

Did you know about my Felt Craft Lovers Group on Facebook? 

It's a Facebook felt lovers group for people of all levels sharing tips and cheering each other on. It's a great place to be to talk felt crafts with others. Everyone is welcome! Click here to sign up to join!

The Steps To Making A Miss Nettle Custom Order Doll Part 2

Now we are on PART 2 of making the Miss Nettle Doll custom doll project. You can see PART 1 HERE.

My fourth step is making the body.

As I stated in PART 1 the doll's head was going to be a bit top heavy so I had to make adjustments to her body design. I made her neck and shoulders wider and legs longer to help compensate for the bulk of the head.

Luckily felt and stuffing are very lightweight so it wasn't too hard to figure out the right body ratios

This isn't the type of child's doll that can be undressed and that made making the body so much easier. The torso and arms are the dress color

The torso is sewn together and stuffed, then the legs are sewn together and stuffed and sewn onto the bottom of the torso. Somehow I either lost of didn't take photos of this process, darn it!

 My fifth step is making the clothes and other details. 

I drew out the shape of the skirt once I had the legs attached and knew the length of the doll.

The character has a underskirt that peeks through in the front of the skirt.

 This was great cause it allowed me at do a double skirt, darker yellow on the outside and light butter yellow on the inside giving the doll more stability. 

After the skirt was made and sewn securely to the torso I made the doll's shoes and sewed them to the feet.

One of the last things I do on a doll is add the arms.I triple sewed them through the body they way you do for a button joint without any buttons since this child is so young.and the arms can be raised a lowered.

To finish her off I made her cape that attaches in the front and is not removable.  Because felt can stretch out of shape if pulled and I didn't want to add more bulk by lining the cape the way I did the skirt, I did the extra step of blanket stitching all the way around the cape to help keep it's shape.

There was one very last detail to the doll that I had to do at the very end after I finished the cape. Miss Nettle is a Fairy and has wings.

I designed a set of wings, cut them out of double pieces of felt, blanket stitched them together to give them some weight and allow them to curve giving a more wing like appearance. 

The doll's wings were triple sewn onto her torso and then I made slits in her cape and then hand button hole stitched around the holes so the wings came through the cape and the holes wouldn't get distorted over time. Whew!

The final step is photographing the doll.

If I were putting this doll in my shop I'd do a whole photo shoot for it but since it was a custom and the client saw work in progress pics along the way I just shot these in my kitchen, lol.
 
Introducing my version of Miss Nettle. I sent my client a video of the doll and all of her features and she loved it!

My mom was kind enough to hold the doll, yep in our kitchen, so I could get full shots of her all the way around. She's a good carrying around and snuggling type of doll. Her final size was 18 inches tall and off she went to her new home.

My client told me her son knew who the doll was right away, carried her around and slept with her that first night he received her! That made me so happy. There is nothing greater than making a child happy!

I hope you enjoyed this project in my Maker Series! More of these projects can be found if you use the search bar and type sassy packrat studios maker series.

 

The Steps To Making A Miss Nettle Custom Order Doll Part 1

I was approached by Facebook friend who owns one of my art pieces this month, asking if  I could make a specific doll for her son who was turning 4.

***Disclaimer: This is a OOAK doll and I only made one and only will ever make just that one. 

Her son loves the Disney show Sofia The First and his favorite character is Miss Nettle. Now since I do not have small children anymore and my grandson lives so far away I wasn't familiar with this show. Miss Nettle seems to be a misunderstood fairy, a lot like Maleficent but in a more happy Disney way.

My first step in designing any piece is research.

I hopped on my computer and did some research on the character, and then I thought sure I can make this doll. Also during my research I saw that no one makes this doll, even Disney isn't making a soft doll version that I could find.

So I pulled some pics of the character from the internet and watched some video clips of the character singing and moving around to get a sense of who she was. 

I wish this show was around when my kids were small, they would have loved it!

Then my client and I went over the details of pricing and size of the doll. 

My second step is ordering supplies.

I packrat felt like, well a packrat! So I do have a lot of felt but I'm slowly moving into using all wool blend felt which I only have a few colors of and none of the colors I needed for this project. So I made a list and ordered felt. 

My felt order came and I was happy with the dress and hat colors but not the hair color. So back to my computer to order more felt. I also got a swatch chart ( which I know I have somewhere but can't find since I moved my studio into this room ). Tip: Always get a swatch chart! It can be a bit expensive but it's the best way to make sure you are getting the color you think you are.

I have my swatch chart pinned to my bulletin board so I don't lose this one! 

Now the hair color (bottom) and the cape color (middle) are right. I originally intended to use one color for the hair and cape but changed my mind since I had to order more felt anyway.

The 2 colors in the first pic that weren't right are perfect for Halloween projects so I will absolutely use them.

My third step is getting down to the business of designing the doll. 

While I was waiting on the felt to arrive I started the doll design. Since this is a doll for a child and not an art doll, I approached the design steps very differently. Sturdiness, durability and recognizing the character were the 3 most important things. This being said, the final doll really ended up being a combination of child's doll and art doll.

This character has a very specific hair style which I had to figure out how to do without making her too top heavy. A real person with that much hair wouldn't be able to stand upright with such a tiny neck! 

I designed the head first because it was the most detailed part of the doll and would take the most time. Getting this part right would make the rest of the doll so much easier.

I used lower grade felt to do a prototype of the head so I had all the details and shapes worked out before I cut into my lovely more expensive wool blend felt.

Then I realized the body pattern I planned to use (the same as my fairy tale dolls) wouldn't hold up the to weight and size of her head, so I had to give her a thicker neck. Plus I had to re-design the torso 3 times before i got it right.

Once the torso was to my liking I had to increase the length of the arms and legs to keep the doll in proportion, all while keeping the agreed upon size in mind; partially for pricing and partially to fit in my custom sized shipping boxes.

The did the face in my own personal big eyed style. It's meant to give the idea of the character but not look exactly like the character.

I was originally going to do the hair like my fairy tale dolls (below), with the details stitched on very simply. And quite honestly that's how I quoted the price.

But I was feeling nostalgic about my son whose birthday is coming up and he's all grown up with a son on his own now and I just felt like doing more for this sweet little boy and his mom who wanted to give her son the doll he wanted.

I decided to make the hair more dimensional than I originally intended. I stuffed and stitched her curls to get the exact look I was hoping for. I also stuffed and stitched curls on the back of her head too. I'm glad I went the extra mile because the end result made me so happy! It also went a long way in making this doll look like the character.

In the original prototype design I planned on the hat being part of the head like this doll below.

But the character's hat is a very big part of her and an 3D version was the way I had to go. A lot more work but completely worth it!

I hope you enjoyed this post and in Part 2 I'll finish the doll.