Worktable Wednesday: Penguin Felt Plush Pattern Launch and a Nursey Art Piece Wip

I launched my 2nd PDF Felt Pattern! I'm really so very proud of this! Being in the hospital and having to take it easy when I came home really set my plans back and this pattern launched later than I expected. But it's up and available now!

This felt penguin pdf pattern comes with 2 face designs. I just love that sleepy/bashful eye design!

 You can make a regular colored penguin or a whole colorful rainbow of felt penguins!

This felt penguin plush is a nice size for pretend play. Not small enough to loose and not too big to go on adventures. Kids who play Club Penguin would really enjoy this plush.

I'm currently working on a add-on felt pattern set that will be listed soon. So keep your eye out for this!

More worktable projects this week include:

A Fairy Tale Felt Nursery Art Piece. My upstairs neighbors are having a baby, they actually just got home from the hospital last night so I'm super behind on getting this piece done for them It's a gift so no time frame to worry about, but I'm super busy and trying to fit this in my schedule is challenging.

I had already done research for it previously so at least that part was done. I had also made a rough sketch of an basic idea I liked. This is seriously rough you guys so don't laugh!

 After looking at popular baby bedding in this theme I decided to change from a cottage to a castle. 

 I refined the idea a little more to a castle coming out of a book.

Then I made a life size sketch of the design. Normally I'd make this on the computer, very neat and precise but I just don't have time so I'm winging it. 

 I started cutting out felt last night. I'm starting at the bottom and working my way up. I hope this turns out as nice as it looks in my head!

Friday Finds: 3 of The Best Felt Food Pattern Shops on Etsy

Today's finds are the best, in my adult artist's eyes, felt food patterns on etsy. Felt food are some of my favorite things to pin on Pinterest. It's also so much more fun and tactile than plastic play food.

I don't personally make felt food cause so many people do and are good at it. This may change down the line as I get my pattern shop up and running.

There are a lot of shops that have easy and fun to make felt food patterns and I'll do a post on them another time, today I'm talking about the best of the best. 

I choose 3 shops that stand far above the rest in realistic detail. 

The absolute cream of the crop is the shop Sweet Emma Jean. I am blown away by the level of detail her patterns have.

She uses pure wool felt for her samples, which really gives her photos a high quality look. You wouldn't want to use craft felt to make these awesome projects, you could but the result wouldn't be the same.

 

  Summer Cookout Set

 Look at that tomato! And the deviled egg and pickle slices! This maker thinks of everything. Her patterns are a great value because you get more than just the hamburger, you get the whole plate of food.

 Pizza Party Set

This pizza looks good enough to eat!  Look at all those yummy toppings! It comes with a pizza paddle (you know the thing they use in pizza places to pull the pizza out of the oven) cheese sticks to dip and a pizza cutter. 

Taco Dinner

This taco dinner has everything from a hard shell taco to a soft shell taco to a quesadilla to a flan dessert. Just beautifully designed felt food.

The only downside I see is toddlers might try to actually eat this so it's probably best for children over 4 years and older. 

This shop also sells pure wool felt so you can get just about everything you need, except the embroidery thread, and get started making your own awesome felt food.

 

The second shop that's on my best of the best list is Gulf Coast Cottage PDF.

I've followed this shop for a long time and have at least one of their patterns from way back in 2008 or 09 and have watched them grow and change. There patterns have gotten more detailed lately and I look forward to seeing how they grow further.

Gulf Coast Cottage's patterns aren't as detailed as the shop above but they are good achievable patterns with a nice level of detail and their accessories are outstanding.
 

Seafood Set

This seafood set is so good and has the right amount of detail for small children. A more realistic detail might be a little scary for the small ones.

This pattern is a full dinner which gives you the customer options to make what you'd like, without having to make everything.

Toaster Set

I LOVE interactive play sets and this toaster is amazing! You can actually put the felt food pieces inside! It's not just something you have to pretend to do. I really like that you get 3 different "toaster items" plus the toaster in this pattern.

Cookie Jar Baking Set

While this is a simpler pattern, it includes everything you need except a cookie sheet (which is available in other pattern set), 3 different kinds of cookies, a rolling pin, cookie jar, rolled out dough and a cookie cutter. I am in love with that rolling pin!

Last but not least is Bugga Buggs. I have a few patterns from them too, when I was first learning to sew with felt.

Garden Veggies

This set has really good detail. Just look at the butternut squash with the seeds, cauliflower and the artichoke. I really like the bright and fun colors used and children will too.

Italian Dinner

This set has everything but the plates. It's a lot of "food" for one pattern and has very nice recognizable details. You get 2 entrees (lasagna and spaghetti) plus salad, 2 kinds of bread and dessert. I love the curly edges to the pasta in the lasagna, great attention to detail!

Blue Ribbon Pies

This pie set is a favorite of mine. There is a cherry pie plate, a whole cherry pie and 4 different patterns for pie slices. Look at the meringue on that lemon pie and the details on the blueberry pie and grasshopper pie, not to mention the crust on that cherry pie! So darn good!

I encourage you to go to these shops and check out their patterns and even buy some and have some felty fun!.

I hope you enjoyed my finds for this Friday! See you all next week!

I'm thinking about purchasing patterns form different businesses and making them and doing a review on them. Please let me know if this is of interest to you. Leave me a comment or email me.

Worktable Wednesday: The Step By Step Guide To How I Design A Felt Craft Pattern

I've been working on a new pattern for weeks now and I'm almost done.

I thought my lovely readers might like to see the process of making a craft felt pattern. So here we go with a quick overview. I have a gift for you for reading this in the very last paragraph.

How I design a felt Craft Pattern.

DESIGNING A PROTOTYPE

This process usually starts with a simple pencil sketch of an idea I had. But in this case I decided to re-design an old pattern of mine, The Fat Penguin.

Cute right? But it was time for an update. I took this original design that I already had a template for and tweaked it a bit on the computer.

Not much is different except the face, which I love, and an addition of feet. So using this graphic I made more tweaks until I came up with something I really liked. 

When I make my soft sculpture pieces I tend to hand draw patterns and leave them that way. I never digitize them. 

Next I digitize my pattern pieces.

 

WHAT IS DIGITIZE?

Digitize is basically a sewing term that means to make a pattern computer friendly so that it can be downloaded and printed. This is how clothing patterns, embroidery patterns and any patterns for sale are made. It gives a professional look to your patterns and allows you to add informative instructions and details to help the sewer complete the project successfully.

I come from a graphic design background, not a sewing one, so I usually refer to this process as making a template. Same process. Here's an example of my pattern.

Wow, where was I? Oh yeah, then I made a pattern on the computer using a graphic software. All my templates have pattern pieces and positioning guides that show where to place pieces and other helpful information.

These templates are only a starting point for me because when I make the prototype I usually will made changes to the design and will later go back and make those same changes to the template.
  

MAKING A PROTOTYPE. 

 A prototype is something you make to see if the pattern works properly. It's an important step when designing a pattern and you make it out of the material you intend it to be made in, ie. fabric, felt etc.

The Happy Earth Guy pattern, from this post,I made was absolutely perfect at the beginning pattern stage, so I took photos while making the prototype for the step by step tutorial. This rarely ever happens, but did that time.

I print and cut out my beginning pattern pieces and start making the penguin.

 

As I sew the prototype, I write notes about each step of the process so I know what works and what I changed to work better.

I'll then use those notes to make changes to the pattern template graphics. I also will use those notes when planning and taking step by step photos and writing the pattern instructions later.

Another thing I do at this point is to think about if I never made something like this before, what questions would I have? What information would I need to complete this project successfully? Then I add answers to that to my notes.

Prototype done! The body of this pattern remained the same from my template but I had to make the feet design 4 different times and figure out the best way to attach them that would make sense to other people.

Once I have all my photos shot, I spend time editing them.   

WHAT IS PHOTO EDITING?

Photo editing is a process where you open your photos in an imaging program, like Photoshop and make changes to the photos. The kinds of changes I make are color brightness, cropping the images to a certain preset size I use for my patterns so all the photos are uniform in size.  

Next up is page layout.

WHAT IS PAGE LAYOUT?

Page layout is how the pattern PDF pages look. It's also where the photos are placed, the size of the text, fonts and the flow and order of the pages. Some programs that can be used are Illustrator, InDesign and even Word.

All of these things have to be worked out and presented in a cohesive and pleasing manner.

Above is an example of one of my pages. I lay out my photos corresponding to my notes and then go back and start writing the instructions. Sometimes I'll remove a photo that doesn't help the reader and everything behind that page has to be re-organized.

After that's all done, spelling, punctuation, grammar checked and photos double checked for proper positioning, I have someone else read through the pattern looking for good flow and mistake.

Sometime I have to re-shoot a photo at a different angle and insert. I kind of hate that, but it happens. Mistakes if found are fixed.

Then finally I move on to the beauty shot.

WHAT'S A BEAUTY SHOT?

A beauty shot is the great looking photo for the front of the PDF. I also use my beauty shots for marketing my patterns and for photos on my website.

This was one I was considering showing the 2 versions of penguins you can make from this pattern, I think it's too plain though. So I had another idea which I still need to shoot that will be much better.

 Here's a shot I did for my Happy Earth Guy Pattern.

 And a shot I did for my Bunny In The Grass Ornament.

Lastly it's time to make the PDF.

WHAT'S A PDF?

 PDF is short for Portable Document File. It allows you to take multiple pages and combine them together into a single document that can be sent by email or downloaded. It's seriously the best thing ever. PDF's can be opened by a free program called Adobe Reader.

If you enjoyed this post about pattern making I have another short post here you might enjoy too! 

Here's a link to an old post series I wrote about creating plush patterns you might enjoy too!

So if you read all the way through to the end, yay and I have a gift for you! 

Sign up for my newsletter now and you'll get FREE access to this pattern when it comes out AND be entered into a GIVEAWAY of one of the prototypes! I know, so cool right? 

Click here to sign up!

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