The Indoor Snowballs Are A Hit At The Store

I've been making 1 1/2" wide 'snowballs' of the Soft & Comfy brand fabric, packaging them three to a bag and putting a cat picture on the topper card.  So far I've sold all the 20 sets I took in within 3 days at the Country Cellar Christmas Store.

NICE!  The Xmas print mice did well too, but the sets have been snapped up fast, so fast I needed to go back to Joann Fabrics store to get more of that fabric.  It's$11.99 a yard, but with coupons it comes down 50%.

I did put rules on the front too ----

Human Rules - Throw TO the cat not at them
Cat Rules -- There's only one. The cat always wins.


It's a case of the right item at the right price point at the right time. 


YEAY!!!!!!!!!

A Different Kind Of Pincushion

I needed some fancy little craft 'giveaways' for sewers in a group I'm in.  Last year I made each person a small bird with wired feet that could perch on things (like lampshades, plants, etc.).  This year I wanted to use up some of the empty baby food jars sitting in a bag that I have.  I use chicken baby food for our cat when his appetite gets too low and he starts losing weight - he's hyperthyroid and almost 18 years old. It's a vet trick that works pretty well.

So after searching online and only finding a few 'nice' things I can do with a jar that size, and giving up on my idea of  'elephant in a jar' idea, and not liking the fake cactus images I saw, I decided to do either a bunny sitting up in the jar like it's a rabbit hole, or a nesting bird in very colorful prints.  While I like the bunny idea, doing up a separate head that's only 1" long..... argh!  I looked at Dutch bunnies, the two toned white and black patterns were nice, but not for somthing THIS tiny.

That left the bird idea -- a nesting bird sitting with half opened wings on a nest of those decorative yarn fibers, with the jar holding the ball firmly down inside of it. The bird will be completely above the baby food jar lip, tail up and possibly embellished with beads and such.  I sketched a few ideas out and am pretty sure I'll be going with this idea.  The nest material would be added around the bottom of the bird after it's sewn to the ball. 

I'll have to go buy some decorative pins to stick in the finished project but that won't be very expensive.  It should look ok with only 3 to 5 pins stuck in the back, and while that may be enough, I am still waffling over whether to use glue to invert the baby food jar lids and attach those to the underside of the jar to make that a base for the item.  I have a spray can of metallic silver which will make the lids very cool looking!  Industrial glue should be able to hold metal to glass for this.

Ahh..........Finger Puppets

My felt stash is pretty big.  I always save the snippets and sections left over after cutting other patterns out, the bits and pieces are always useful.  

Well I did Pinterest searches for finger puppets to see what others are doing. Some are very nice, some are super simplistic.  Most all of them seem to be HANDSEWN, which is fine for tiny items but takes too much time in my opinion.  I looked up a basic fox image and duplicated that myself on the sewing machine.  Yes, it was a hassle to do three stitches and turn, down seven, etc.  But the LOOK is so much cleaner!  

Trimming everything was a breeze too.  And for the fox I added a tail with white tail tip. The image I saw online looked easy to duplicate without much fuss.  

https://www.etsy.com/listing/237065601/forest-critter-finger-puppets-forest?ga_order=most_relevant&ga_search_type=all&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_query=felt%20fox%20finger%20puppet&ref=sr_gallery_6

Though I left off the ribbon 'arms', made the ears black with a white inner part, and added the tail, as mentioned.  6mm beads for the eyes and nose were added after the  fox was done.  They went on with black thread.  Super  quick, I made 2 foxes and might make gray wolves and a few cats too.  These can be sold as sets, or used as ornaments or package tie details.

I have to admit, the foxes are pretty sharp looking.

Fleece Hats With Animal Ears

It's coming up on cold weather season. I've got so much polar fleece stacked in the sewing room, far more than I can use making fleece scarves, that I started doing google searches on 'fleece hats with animal ears'.  

Wow is there a variety.  I'm not interested in the kids sizes, I've been thinking of doing them up for adults.  Deviantart and Etsy both had some sophisticated designs.  Each that I've seen that I LIKED were basically made up of 4 triangles for the head part, a wrap around brow brim and then the ears placed in one of the side seams.  The more fancy type (which look better) had the inner front part of the ear sewn into a slice made in the hat, allowing for an L shape for the sewn base of each ear, which helps with the stand-up ability for larger ears such as for fox and wolf instead of cat ears. 

There are tutorials online, findable with enough searches.  Fleece stretches to fit, so the brow band doubled over helps keep the shape on a person's head without stretching out.  Enough people are making the SAME design that I suspect there's a pattern out there in Butterick, Simplicity, Burda, etc. which probably has the basic hat shape.  

Some have ear flaps and ties for under the chin, but I like the ones with the plain head band better, they look cleaner cut.  Here's a sample of one of the Wolf ones that caught my eye. 

http://www.taghats.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Ear-Hats.jpg 

I did run across several fleece hats with eyes added, like the shark hat with teeth around the brim to make it look like it's eating the head of the wearer.  OMG!  I wouldn't make the shark but had an immediate image of an elaborate (yet simple to make) hat done as a sabertooth cat head hat, with ears put on like the wolf one in the link above, but with felt eyes and teeth hanging down to frame the face in front of the wearer's ears!  

Here's one image where they did a face, it's just appliqued on.  I'd do stuffed fangs with a slightly stuffed circular muzzle area at the upper base of each tooth.  A sabertooth cat/hat. 

Image --- http://clearkid.deviantart.com/art/Grey-Wolf-Hat-133895172  

The juices are flowing!