How to Make a Felt DIY Pirate Sword Tutorial

Arrrrrrr, me hearties! It be International Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Yesterday I shared a Felt Pirate Eye Patch Tutorial which was admirably modeled by my own little Pirate last night:

And was then borne off to school by my bigger Pirate this morning:

So today I'm going to share with you my tutorial for making a Felt Pirate Sword. This is quite timely as my smallest Pirate was bought one (a very flimsy one!) last weekend and promptly broke it, so he needed a replacement!

You will need:

- Cardboard - A4 size (either two pieces of thinner cardboard stuck together or a piece of thick cardboard that won't flop about when waved about)
- Grey Felt (9" x 8")
- Black Felt (11" x 6")
- A Biro
- Strong Scissors (for cutting the cardboard)
- Grey & Black embroidery thread
- A piece of ribbon and matching embroidery thread
- Glue
- Template (which can be found at the end of the tutorial)

First cut out the template and draw round it onto the cardboard & cut out. (if you are using thin cardboard, cut two pieces and stick them together)

Then draw around the cardboard onto the grey felt with your biro and cut out leaving a 1/4" extra around the edge

Flip the cardboard sword over and repeat so you have two mirror images on the grey felt for the blade part of the sword

Then repeat on the black felt for the handles. If you have tailors chalk you can use that to draw round to see the lines more easily, but I found I could just about see the biro lines if I held the felt up to the window:

Then using a bit of glue to keep the grey felt in place, with the grey embroidery thread (2 strands) blanket stitch neatly all the way round the grey felt to make the blade

Next using glue to keep the black pieces in place, with the black embroidery thread (2 strands) blanket stitch all the way round the black felt to make the handle.

Lastly sew or tie a piece of ribbon around the join between the black & grey felt

And now you're ready for a swashbuckling adventure!

Please feel free to make this felt sword as many times as you like for personal use, but please do not sell either the finished items, or the tutorial and if you blog or want to share any of the pictures from the tutorial, please link back to this post.

I'd love to see any Piratey pictures that you take if you've created either the eye patch or the sword using my tutorials, so please feel free to send them to simmi@gracesfavours.co.uk

Enjoy!

How to Make a Felt DIY Pirate Eye Patch Tutorial

In honour of tomorrow being my favourite celebration day, International Talk Like a Pirate Day I thought I'd share a tutorial with you today, ready for your little Pirates to wear tomorrow (or any time if your kids are like mine!)

A Felt Pirate Eye Patch

You will need:

Black Felt
White Felt
Black Elastic
Scissors
White & Black embroidery thread
A pencil or tailors pen
The pattern (which can be found at the end of the tutorial)

Step One:

Cut out 2 black eye patch pieces and 1 white skull & cross bones piece

Then using the skull & cross bones template as a guide mark on the white felt the position of the eyes and the nose and using sharp embroidery scissors cut out the eye sockets and the nose

Then using either a sharp pencil or a tailor's pen (which has disappearing ink) draw on your mouth and teeth:

Then using the black embroidery thread (2 strands) and using a back stitch, embroider on your mouth and teeth. You should now have a finished skull

Next using the white embroidery thread (again 2 strands) with a simple running stitch, sew on the skull and cross bones to the top layer of the eye patch

Once you've gone all the way round, your eye patch will look like this

Next using your black embroidery thread sew the elastic onto the back piece of the eye patch, securely going over it a number of times

Then repeat for the other end

Then pin your front eye patch piece to the back and sew round the edges, using your black embroidery thread and using a simple running stitch, but making sure you go over the elastic bits 2 or 3 times to ensure they're secure

And tie off your thread neatly at the back.

You now have an eye patch fit for a real Pirate, me hearty! Arrrrrrr!

And here is my little Pirate modelling her eye patch

I'm afraid (as is always the way!) that my printer/scanner has just decided to play up, so I've taken a photo of the template page and will get my husband to scan it in for me from work tomorrow, so it should be available as a printable sheet then! Why do printers always go wrong at just the most inconvenient moment?!

Please feel free to make as many of these eye patches as you'd like for personal use, but please do not sell the finished articles or the instructions.

I'd love to see any pictures of anything that you make using any of my tutorials, so please do feel free to email me a picture at simmi@gracesfavours.co.uk

Enjoy and Arrrrrrrrrrr!

Another felt tutorial will be available tomorrow.

How do you calm down an excitable child?

Well, as most of you know my eldest, Seren, started school last week... it was a VERY exciting week for her. And seriously exhausting for all concerned!!

First of all we had a special day out with just Mummy & Daddy on Monday (to Cheltenham for posh nosh) while Patrick was in nursery - I've not seen her so excited and happy in a long time (and she's always pretty excited and happy!)

And then on Tuesday she was up bright and early (!!) and in her new School Uniform! SO cute :-)

Then of course Patrick wanted to get in on the action:

And then madam's best friend (and future husband according to her!) arrived for the walk to school:

Gonna be showing this one at their wedding!!!

What the two weeks of funny hours whilst they "settle in" means though is that I'm all over the shop and don't know who I'm supposed to be taking & collecting when... it's left me rather disorientated!

But only this week left and then Seren'll be doing full days and I'll be back to a proper routine.

Awww I feel all teary at the thought of having a baby old enough for school! Sniff...... *deep breaths* and I'm fine :-)

PS. The answer to the blog post title is of course, you can't! Just ride it out and hope you have enough caffine & alcohol to cope with it!

Wholesale Orders

Sorry for being a bit quiet on the blog front recently - I've been suffering with a mystery ailment (well that sounds much more exciting than the reality, which was insufficient iron in my blood!!) and haven't felt up to doing much of anything... which has made for an interesting time with the kids still on school hols and a wholesale order from a lovely lady, just up the road from me in Cheltenham, who I met at the Home & Gift exhibition in Harrogate.... you might remember the post I wrote about it here.

While we were at the exhibition her eye fell on this:

Personalised Airplane Picture

As her company centers around Aeronautical gifts, it seemed perfect!

So I've been busily creating 5 of these framed pictures - they're basically done, but still need pressing and framing:

All 5 pictures with the banner reading "Up & Away"

I love the pinks - might have to some more pink & grey things

We also settled on some of these canvas drawstring bags:

But the ones I'm making for the shop won't be personalised so I've gone for a larger plane:

So a bit of work still to do this evening - as I'm delivering the order tomorrow morning!

I've also got a mountain of other orders that have been piling into the shop in the last week, which is lovely and next weekend I'll have lots to show you, but does mean I might not get round to everyone at Handmade Monday this week - although I will try my best!

My little girl also starts school on Tuesday, so there'll be a totally gratuitous mid-week post about that (hopefully without me shedding too many tears!!)

How NOT to finish anything in a week!

Arrrrrrggggg! This week has been all over the place!

I've been trying to work whilst the kids are on school holiday (as has every other craft-business owner who's also a parent of small/young children) and this week I've spectacularly achieved almost nothing!

I've posted out a couple of these:

Dark Green VW Beetle Hanging Ornament

Red VW Beetle Hanging Ornament

Felt Airplane applique

A rainbow of VW Campervan Hanging Ornaments

All of which can be found in my Etsy shop and on the new exciting website I am proud to be part of Uniquely UK

I've been trying to get a fascinator started for a local customer. The brief was 1950s style, with a veil to match her dress which has shades of grey, cerise and black... I have the exact thing in mind, but it's a fiddly job that I really can't be doing in the evenings after the kids have gone to bed as I'm generally too tired and the light isn't good enough, but also can't be doing with the children about. So I'm LONGING for their nursery day this week!!

I've also had feedback from my lovely Father-in-Law who I made this picture for:

Rolls Royce Silver Shadow II Felt Picture with a personalised number plate

My Father-in-Law worked for a large very posh car dealership in London in the 70s and 80s and these were the type of cars they used to work on every day - so we thought he might like it. His initial comment was delight that he could finally say he too owned a Rolls!!!

So nothing much new with me, but I do have all the school uniform labelled (can't believe my baby is nearly 5 and about to start school!) which was a rather long & boring job! I'm hoping a hop round the Handmade Monday blogs will inspire me to get something new created this week... watch this space!

Being Featured on The Guardian Website

A couple of weeks ago I had a very exciting phone call from someone at The Guardian. The phone call was to ask me as a member of the Guardian's Small Business Network (which I joined a couple of months ago) if I was planning to enter the Showcase they are running:

I was rather taken abact - they'd done their homework on my business, been on my website and even read some of my blog posts and wanted me to enter the Home Business Innovation section.... so I have and guess what? I've got my entry published on their website!!!

That means I've got past stage one - The Editors!! They basically weed out all the entries that don't meet the criteria or that are not suitable for the showcase and then they publish the ones they've selected to go forward to the next stage.

The second stage is the shortlisting, which starts on the 9th August 2013 and this is where the panel of judges will choose 3 companies. These three will have a write up done by a Guardian journalist for the main website and the Finance section of the newspaper and then ultimately there's an awards ceremony next year (May 2014) where they announce the winners of my category and all the other categories.

I don't really expect to get shortlisted as there are some amazing companies already through and there are more to come, but just to have got this far feels wonderful!

Anyway, you know I'll keep you posted!!

Now I'm off for a scoot round the Handmade Monday Blogs with a cuppa and some naughty (but very nice) chocolate brownies!

Campervans for the Cushion Competion

A while ago a very nice lady called Suzie contacted me from a company called Terry's Fabrics and asked if I would be interested in getting creative with some of their fabrics, in return for blogging about it... Would I?!? Erm, Hell Yeah!!

This is the range that she sent me:

LOADS of choice (in fact it was hard to restrict myself to less than 25!)

The 4 I chose in the end (it could have been smaller pieces of 8 fabrics, but I had a couple of projects in mind so I went for larger pieces of these materials:

And of course the one I HAD to have.... the Campervan material!








I then discovered that there was a bloggers competition running to make an 18" x 18" cushion cover, using Terry's Fabrics and the winner will win £250 worth of vouchers to spend on the Terry's Website!

So, in super quick time I have put together my entry - inspired by the Blur pop art album cover, with the different quarters being different colours, I give you the Family Campervans:

Each Campervan is personalised with the family member's name

Being shown off on my living room sofa

A collage of the close up shots of each Campervan

The fab campervan material on the back in an envelope style

Side view showing off my neat sewing!!

I really enjoyed coming up with the design and suspect that this will probably be quite a popular item, so keep your eyes peeled for it in the shop soon!

I will be keeping my eyes firmly fixed on the Terry's Blog to see the other competition entrants and more excitingly, who wins all those lovely vouchers :-)

Edited to add: I'm cheating a bit today - I'm going to add this to the Handmade Monday post as I've been so busy this weekend and not had a chance to get on the laptop till just now (6pm on Sunday evening!!)