Busy Hands Arts and Crafts: Simply Felt

While waiting for our UK visa, my daughter and I decided to get busy on a new hobby where designing, stitching and stuffing of felt cloth were involved. We enjoyed doing it and had been doing more designs up to this moment. It all started with stuffed letters to make a personalized doorknob hanger or door tag which is always best as a gift anytime of the year. Be it birthdays, anniversaries or holidays, this will be a wonderful and useful gift to anyone.
In this blog, I will share to you the ways on how we do things. I hope that you will like our projects somehow.
I will start on making letters. The things that you will need are as follows:

1. different colors of felt cloth
2. pair of scissors
3. pencil/pen
4. polyester stuffing
5. needle
6. any 2-3 colors of thread

Procedures:

1. Of course, you will need a pattern which is easy to do. First, look for a font/style of letter you want from your computer using Microsoft Word or even WordPad will do. I still prefer Cooper Black though. Please take note that the wider the font the better for making stuffed letters. If you have chosen your best font (lower cases only for this project), change the size up to 300 to 350 depending on the width of the letter and trace it in a bond paper. the letter should be at least 2 1/2 to 3 inches in height and at least 2 up to 2 1/2 in width to make a proper sized stuffed letter.
Now you can use that as a pattern.

Cooper Black font

2. Trace letter patterns on felt cloth. You need to trace twice on each felt but the second one should be inverted so that the mark of the pen or pencil will be hidden once you are ready to stitch them. Using different colors of felt cloth on each letter is better so the name will have a colorful effect when made.
3. Cut the letters now and put the letters together.

Cutting the traced letters

Traced and cut felt cloth ready for stitching

4. Start stitching the edges using blanket stitch but leave a space where you can stuff the polyester in.

How to do blanket stitching ( picture from millennia-designs.com )

5. Stuff the letter. Once the letter is filled with enough polyester, stitch the space to finish your letter.

Stuffing letters

These are the letters we finished and samples of the door tag/doorknob hanger we made. =D

Stuffed Alphabet

Doorknob Hanger

Door Tag

I was able to offer these personalized door tags to my brother who ordered 35 name tags as gifts to his officemates! You can make your own business too. =D

Since my family is here now in Scotland, I was not able to do more business in the Philippines but I left all the materials to my sister to continue the business and still doing good. She created more designs too. Just like us here in UK, me and my daughter are still doing some designs. I would also like you to see the sign I made last christmas which I hung in our fireplace.