just a quick post to say there are some felt stones in my shop.

I never did say that I sold one of my diggers, but I did! And on my birthday to boot! My little floral digger was sent off to Jen at scissorspaperglue and I sent the polka dot digger off to New York yesterday morning. I knew I wanted to make the packaging for my toys and after a little brainstorming I came up with this simple drawstring bag. It’s made of muslin and I figured out how to do french seams just so I wouldn’t have to line it (they’re not really hard at all you just have to get over putting wrong sides together, but corners I had trouble with–anyone out there have any advice?). I also get to use my automatic button holer (holer, really? hole maker maybe?) which makes me feel like I know what I’m doing–always a treat. At first I wanted to embroider “my digger,” but found some passable stamps at Joann’s instead. It gives me a place to put the name of my shop as well. And I finally got my felt rocks up in the shop and made a small linen drawstring bag for them too.

The rocks turned out nice, I think, but they are less for the diggers and more for decoration really. I really like the moss covered ones and I may just do a couple set of those. But back to the drawstring bags. For a while now I’ve had the idea to make simple drawstring bags for toys. There are just so many damn toys and our toys are getting smaller and more complicated now–they need to be contained! The bags would be made of linen or a linen/cotton blend or even just muslin, and maybe lined or not lined, and with trains or blocks or dinosaurs or animals on the front either stitched or appliqued. And the reason they aren’t made yet is because I can’t decide on anything. Is linen too precious for a toy bag? Is muslin too cheap? Would embroidery get snagged or does applique look too slapped together? Would you even buy a toy bag? I need some feedback from the mamas (and papas) out there. I have a little craft fair coming up in march (!) and I think this would be something I could make a bunch of and that would go over well (the craft fair is also a children’s clothes and toys consignment sale–it’s called half pint resale and my very talented and energetic friend put it all together!). So leave a comment and help me decide, because I’ve been thinking about these silly little bags for too long now.

I have been absent from this little blog for a bit. We’ve had guests and will have many more in the coming weeks, so you’ll only hear from me on and off for a while. If you actually know me, well, just call instead of stalking me on the internet, silly.

There hasn’t been much time for making, but I did manage to try my hand at wet felting. I bought a big bag of lovely colored roving at a garage sale this summer and have been meaning to try it ever since. I thought it would be nice to sell a little bag of felted rocks along side my diggers. Wet felting is ridiculously easy, but wet felting on details was not so easy. A good friend told me that white wool doesn’t felt as easily (because of the bleach?) which is probably why I was swearing up a storm trying to put the tiny stripes on the rocks. But I haven’t given up. I really like the rocks especially in bright colors and I think I’m going to try to embroider some rock like details on them. Maybe even some moss!