book excerpt: make this felt pillow
From the brand new book Craftivity by Tsia Carson of supernaturale.com
How excited were we to get a copy of Craftivity: 40 Projects For the DIY Lifestyle! Produced by Tsia Carson, the founder of supernaturale.com, the supercool craft website whose boards and blogs are always brimming with bright ideas. Tsia’s book is just the thing to motivate you into some serious crafting-action; it’s filled with clever ideas, gorgeous photos and clear, easy-to-understand instructions. Projects range from the simple — like embroidering bright threads around an old sweater’s moth holes to spruce it up — to full-on furniture pieces (the rice table for kiddies is genius). Tsia was kind enough to let us share one of their how-tos with you, the amazingly easly and impressive Felt Pillow, above, by Scott Bodenner. Photo by Svend Lindbaek Click through to the next page for step-by-step instructions!
Buy your copy of Craftivity: 40 Projects For the DIY Lifestyle! by clicking here. At amazon.com, $13.57.
Felt Pillows
You’ll Need: 4 sweaters (or other pieces of knit fabric) of all wool or nearly all wool. Pattern makes pillows approximately 15″ X 15″ * A washing machine * Down or down substitute pillow filling * Needle and thread * Scissors
Making it:
1. Gather sweaters that are no longer wearable
2. Felt by throwing in the washing machine (try a normal cycle with a small amount of soap). Hot water felts more than warm.
3. Repeat until you’re happy with the texture.
4. Cut up the felted sweaters into any shapes you want, although squares are always good.
5. Sew pieces together in backstich to make two 15″ squares in whatever pattern that makes you smile.
6. Sew three sides of the two squares together to make a pillow case.
7. Fill with down pillow stuffing. Sew fourth side in backstich to close pillow.
October 19th, 2006 at 12:39 pm
Someone told me about making mittens this way: Take an old wool sweater and cut out four mitten shapes, really large, and sew them together to make a pair of mittens. Felt them as described above. You just have to pay attention to how much smaller they’re getting–stop the felting when they fit correctly.
January 9th, 2009 at 6:52 pm
[...] often, I see things that have been restructured from their previous lives as ties, sweaters, or bed sheets and there’s always something a little…off. Either it looks a little [...]