Felt Pictures and Miscellany

A low-adrenaline week.

Emily has been asking for more shapes for the felt board 

and I've been putting it off forever- my felt stash is so 

inaccessibly messy that I don't touch any of it if I can help it. 

Last week I made myself buy an interim (until I install more 

cubby holes or cabinets somewhere) tub to store them 

because I could no longer bear the sight of it all. 

And then the neatness of the stack of colors, now sanely 

contained, was rather motivating and exciting, so last night 

I cut out some new felt shapes. Emily was specific in what 

she wanted, which is always helpful, so it took me less than 

an hour to make some new scenes for her 

(and mess up the felt stash again, bah).

A princess castle

with new royal outfits and hair for the old Felt Girl and Boy

and their horse-and-carriage. The poor old horse looks 

a bit off because I forgot to cut a mane. The carriage is 

what became of the pumpkin after Cinderella's fairy 

godmother's nifty spell - it still bears some of its 

original pumpkin-ness.

This next scene is my current favorite because it has no pink 

in it and appeals to my inner nerd (I used to be a high school 

Physics lecturer/tutor before being promoted 

to domestic engineer):

Here's a shuttle taking off from Earth

and landing on the Moon. Old Felt Girl and Boy are now 

astronauts making giant leaps for man (and woman)kind.

Closer-ups of the shuttle and spacesuit, which , incidentally, is 

the easiest thing in the world to make. Trace the outline of the 

felt figure and cut a squarish hole for the face.

Building on the old sea scene, here are some new fish 

and Astronaut Boy is now a deep sea diver, with an airhose. 

Versatile outfit, that spacesuit.

I've always liked fish for art subjects because one can do 

so much with them. The ones in the left picture are assembled 

from individual shapes and random left-over felt pieces. 

The ones in the right picture are fish-shaped and I set 

Emily loose on them with fabric markers. She had a blast.

Finally, here are some simpler shapes for Jenna. Recently Jenna 

has been associating the "snowman" with anything that consists 

of shapes in a row, touching. For instance, when laying cookies 

or biscuits on a tray to be baked, she has their sides touching 

and says she's making a snowman. So I cut out shapes for 

a snowman and Emily added a snowball being thrown at it.

Semi-related point: you can quite clearly see the awful fuzzy 

pilled surface of the light side of our feltboard. Serves me right 

for using horrid acrylic felt instead of the Good Stuff.

Jenna loves her toy cupcakes and muffins so here are 

some felt versions. Emily suggested the tops could 

double as scoops of ice-creams 

so we added some cones and made Confectionery Transformers.

So not very difficult to make, really. 

Emily's ideas were a good springboard for bigger scenes 

so if anyone is looking for new felt cutouts, the kids 

themselves probably have the best ideas!

And now for some updates.

I haven't been making anything fun this week - mostly just 

utility sewing. Patched and re-hemmed three pairs of jeans 

so I could stop wearing my lone, last pair of decent pants 

every day. Then sewed up Emily's flannel nightgown that had 

been cut out and sitting on my sewing table for weeks. 

Also finally loaded the overlocker with woolly nylon and serged 

some fleece blankets for gifts- they'd been lying around in the 

Low Priority section of the room since Halloween. 

How good it feels to be done with these 

housekeeping projects at last!