SEAM meeting at fiddlehead, Spring re-capbeautiful

beautiful wool felt waiting to be turned into flowers!
 

these flowers are so sweet and can be made into a brooch or a hair bow!

In the Spring I taught this wool felt flower at the SEAM meeting at the lovely Fiddlehead Artisan Supply in Belfast. (Love their shop, it has everything a crafty girl could need!)

The pattern came from Colletterie, also a really lovely site chick full of how-tos and diy projects.

So here is what you need to get started:

Wool Felt

Scissors

Sewing Needle and thread

Pin Back or Barrette

Cut 2 lengths of felt in 2 different colors, sized about 2 by 5 and 2.5 by 5

Fold them in half and cut snip them all the way across leaving about 1/4 inch at the bottom of each piece- that is where you will be putting your running stitch

Do a running stitch along the bottom of each piece off felt an pull at the end to gather the felt.

Once you begin to gather it you will see the flower shape coming to life.

Once you have your flower use how you would like stitch a few stitches to hold it into place.

You will repeat this with the smaller piece of felt and then lay on on top of the other and sew them together to make the 2 tier flower.

Once your flower is all sewn up you can attach it to a Pin Back or a Barrette.

To see the tutorial in full that we followed and to see more sweet felt flower tutorials click here!

{on the hoop} this week: olympia!

for a very special little girl turning 3 years old this month!

a party full of pinks, oranges and browns...

our original bird crown gets a colorful twist!

{on the hoop} this week: the boys

some festive boys birthdays! full of polka dots and love!

little bits get to go to nursery school

here at our house we have our own sort of nursery school, we call it playschool...morning glory garden playschool!
it meets three mornings a week and normally little bits and i have mondays and tuesday to ourselves. but as it happens i got a little job offer at the amazing hope arts (where i worked this past summer--and loved) teaching handwork there. so on tuesdays little bits is off to school with papa! it is very exciting for her to be at her "my school" and have teachers that are all her own. the night before she went all around the house packing her "packpack" and wore it even in the car on the way there. last year we were lucky enough to assist at http://www.merriconeag.org/, but there is nothing like venturing out to your own school. this mama shed a few tears but my girl just ran right in, barely a wave good by and soaked it all up!
it is a very good experience being on the other end of letting your little one go into the arms of another care giver that you trust.
lucky we are to have so many magical teachers where we live and such a wonderful waldorf school to nurture us all!

p.s. i got the idea of the sign form my dear friend heather--love that!

crafting with children//sewing with wool

this week at play school we did some dyeing of wool and sewing as well.
in the past we made crowns for michaelmas, but i really wanted something that the children could do a bit of designing on.
we did some sewing at the holiday but given there are 2 birthdays and 2 half birthdays at school this month they really wanted to make each other "birthday crowns"...
i do a fair bit of hand sewing during school time and they were very interested in getting their paws into my scrap wool bin. they pulled out all kinds of shapes and non shapes and declared them all sorts of things, boats, stars, gnomes, houses, flowers.
but the most surprising thing, i must admit was some of the actual sewing! i was delighted to find that some of the children had really learned from keeping a close eye on what i was sewing and how. you can see her some examples of fine sewing for 3 and 4 year olds! i'm so proud!
and their imagination is not only boundless it is sheer inspiration!
i love my job(s)!