Sew A Softie Tutorial for Valentine's Day - Puppy Love

Things are moving a darn sight too quickly for me this year... today marks the 2 month count down to our moving date! I have so much to do, but I couldn't miss out on taking part in the Sew A Softie Tutorials round up for Valentine's Day. (Catch up with our other tutorials here)

I've always struggled to come up with handmade Valentine's gifts/creations, but this one came to me while I was walking the dog, so I've entitled it 'Puppy Love'

You will need:

2 pieces of red felt 10cm x 10cm

1 piece of pale pink felt 10cm x 10cm

1 piece of pink felt 10cm x 10cm

Scraps of black & white felt

Pink embroidery thread

Black embroidery thread

Red embroidery thread

Glue

A good handful of stuffing

Tweezers

Instructions:

1. Use all the pattern pieces to cut out 2 red felt hearts, 2 pale pink ears, 2 pink ears, 2 white eye pieces, 2 black eye pieces and 1 black nose piece. Take 1 pale pink ear and 1 pink ear and whip stitch them together. Do the same with the other ear - I reversed the colours, so the ears were not the same both sides, but you don't have to.

2. Turn the ear inside out - I used a pencil to poke the bottom of the ear up inside of itself and then used a pair of tweezers to pull it out of the top. If you are getting children to sew this pattern, you can skip this step and leave the ears right side out.

3.  Glue the whites of the eyes onto one of the red hearts.

4. Glue the black part of the eyes onto the whites. I used the tweezers again to get them in the right position. With younger children it might be easier to draw the blacks of the eyes on with a felt pen.

5. Glue on the black nose and using a pencil or pen, draw on the mouth.

6. Using your black thread, back stitch the mouth onto the face.

7. Pin both red hearts together with the ears sandwiched in between. Then using the red thread, back stitch round, following the picture above. Leave an opening for the stuffing.

8. Stuff the face, making sure it is full, but not over stuffed. Then back stitch up the opening and you have a finished Puppy friend!

I hope you've enjoyed making this along with me and keep a look out for the rest of our Sew a Softie Valentine's series. 

How to - Valentine's Day Felt Card Tutorial

Ohhh it's that smoochy time of year coming up again and so I thought I'd do a fun little no-sew felt tutorial for you.

Here's what we're making:

It's a fairly simple tutorial, so I'm going to put the step by step instructions in the comment field for each photo.

If you're looking for presents to go with your handmade card, have a look in my Etsy Shop and also at Uniquely UK for masses of gorgeous pressie ideas!

Obviously you can change the slogan, but as it's supposed to be a jigsaw puzzle I chose 'We are a perfect fit!'

Materials:

Card (I had a pre-fold card in my stash, but you can always fold in both ends to meet like a door)
Thick red felt (if you want to make your felt thicker you can glue two layers together but it doesn't matter if it's thinner felt)
Paper
Pencil
Ruler
Red Pen
Glue

Instructions:

1. All the materials you'll need

Fold the piece of paper in half and draw half a heart shape as shown

Cut out the heart shape (with the paper folded over so you have a perfect heart shape)

Using your pencil, draw around the heart onto the felt.

Draw a jigsaw shape into the heart. I went straight down the middle, but you can do it in any shape and on any angle you like.

Cut the heart into two pieces according to your jigsaw line

Draw around the jigsaw line, using one side of the paper template (it doesn't matter which you use)

The trickiest bit is to cut out the heart and cut the jigsaw line into the shape keeping both sides looking perfect... small cuts and take it slowly is the best advice.

Your cut out heart should look like this when placed back together.

Using your paper heart, work out where to draw your lines on the card (you may need more or less lines, depending on what you want to say)

Write your message in pencil first, to make sure it fits on ok.

Go over the pencil writing with your red pen.

Then stick your heart onto either side of the card, so when it's closed, the heart fits together.

If you don't want to use a card like the one above with two doors, you can use a standard folded piece of card and either stick the heart pieces together, or just apart to make the jigsaw shape more obvious.

When the red pen is dry, rub out the pencil marks and you're done :-)

I hope you all have a very Happy Valentine's Day!

Too early to be thinking about St Patrick's Day?

Photo courtesy of Luxpresso.com

Happy New Year!

I hope you've all had a wonderful Christmas and New Year - any sore heads out there today? I'm feeling a little delicate after a great evening at our place with some good friends, homemade curry (well, as the diet started today we thought last night should be a decent blow out!) and lots of yummy wine, champagne, toffee vodka and Baileys!

So as with all good hangovers, we've been talking about future plans and the usual resolutions and I started thinking about all the exciting things I can do with my business now that I am able to dedicate all my energies (when not being a wife, parent, housekeeper, chauffeur, cook, cleaner.... you get the picture?!) to it.

So I started thinking about Valentine's and St Patrick's Days... I think I will plan some new product lines which have the same items at their centre, but each will focus on the different celebration... so far I am thinking about VW Campervans and VW Beetles as the central items - they are certainly some of my best sellers, but I was also thinking about Mini Coopers and possibly Morris Minors.

Photo courtesy of Skybluefreelance.info

Photo courtesy of Classicandperformancecar.com

What other vehicles do you think would work well in felt?

The lovely thing about the car/campervan range is that they can be personalised, which is great for gift giving and they're a bit different which thankfully seems to appeal to folk!

Anyway, right now I have to get my house guests up (for the second time - they've all had to retire to bed for the afternoon!) and find something for my kids to eat for dinner.... ahhhh the life of a working mum :-)