Design by Nine

I did not mean to keep you waiting. Our internet has been down. Now that it is all fixed, we can have some fun with felt.

First gather the supplies you will need:

felt by the sheet or by the yard, in fall colors you like
thread to match or coordinate
scissors
paper with line drawings of leaves.
pins
seam ripper
your sewing machine

It is much easier to sew this project if you set the presser foot tension to zero. You can drop your feed-dogs or cover them with that lil' plastic plate if you prefer or if you don't have a presser foot pressure control.



Print, copy, or trace your line drawings onto as many sheets of printer paper as you want leaves.
Rough cut (not with your sewing scissors) the line drawings out. Pin the line drawing to the double thickness of felt. Pin only inside the outlines. You don't need very many pins.


The simpler the drawing the better. And it will be easier to get the hang of sewing.


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simple line drawings


cut out drawing pinned to double thicknesses of felt


Why not make a pile while your at it?

Now that you have your would be pile all ready and your machine set . Lets sew! Did I hear a "Wait"? ahhhh. Your thinking I forgot to tell you to cut these leaves out first. But I haven't. We are going to sew THROUGH the paper! Following the lines, sew the outline and center vein of your leaves.












With the presser foot tension or feed dogs down/covered you do not have to sew in a straight forward motion. You can pretty much sew as you please to follow the line drawing. It does take a bit to get use to this "Free Form" sewing, but once you do, you will see how easy and fun this can be.
When your pile is all sewn, use the seam ripper to run along the now perforated outlines. This will help free the felt from the paper. There will be some annoying little pieces that don't want to come out of the stitching. You can keep working at it using tweezers if you like, or if it will show. If it won't show... Ask yourself. " Do I really care?"



the back will give you an idea of what the finished leaf will look like


along the dotted line


it doesn't matter if you missed the lines a bit


tear paper away


To tweeze or not to tweeze?


Almost done. Now we cut out our leaves. You can use just about any scissor. Sewing scissors work really well. Applique scissors are even better. How I wish I would of bought a pair of these little gems sooner. I don't really do applique, so I just figured I didn't need a pair. I did.
Ok. Start cutting.... Get close to the stitching line, but not too close.







Once the leaves are all cut out, you can hang 'em up, make a pile. Or accent other fall deco you have.




Look around and see what other shapes/items would be cool as felt art.
Stay tuned for part two and three... Where we will get some dimension.