Flower Pincushion - Pincushion Swap

Two weeks ago I mailed off my pincushion swap to my partner in England.  She got it yesterday.  Here is what I made for her.  It is a flower pincushion that uses a jar lid as its base, and I also used eco-fi felt for it.  Eco-fi felt is made from recycled plastic bottles.  I used 3 different shades of blue felt for the petals, and then I painted lines on them with puffy paint.  The petals are good for storing sewing needles.

On the top are some green sequence with yellow paint dots in the center.  Then I lined the base of the yellow center with blue shiny trim.  My partner likes shiny stuff.

I also added some sequence to the base as well.

Here is what I received from my partner: two pincushions, the small one is a bottle cap ring pincushion.  The large one uses a sock around the outside of it.  Here is what my partner said about them: "Hi Hun I am so glad that you liked them. You are right about the sock. The strawberry fabric was left over my friends little girls dress. The black part on the side of the bottle top pincushion was the strap off my old velvet top and both of them are stuffed with wool from my friend’s pet sheep Bertie."


It was fun making the pincushion and getting some in trade.  I want to make another flower one for myself so that I have a good place to store all of my sewing needles as well as my pins.

Simple Birthday Goodie Bags

The end of birthday season is almost here.  One of the birthdays is for my oldest son whose party is next weekend.  He is having a laser tag party.  He requested that his goodie bags be simple black felt ones.  No painting or anything on them.  To help know whose bag is whose, I added some red and blue felt tags to the ribbon handles (added before the bag was sewn).  Red and blue are the colors of the two teams at the laser tag place.  I'll paint on the names of everyone who I know will be at the party, and then I'll bring a sharpie to write the names of kids who come but did not rsvp.  Right now I know 6 of the 9 kids will be there.  I'm so glad that he wanted a simple bag this year.  It makes getting ready for his party so much easier.  Now I just need to knit a sack bot for him (a robot sack boy from the game Little Big Planet 2).  I found some cotton yarn that looks kind of like woodgrain.  It is the one thing other than the goodie bags that he asked me to make for his birthday.

The felt is eco-fi felt, which is made from 100% post consumer recycled plastic bottles.

Instead of using a die cut of a tag this year, I just cut out some rectangles and cut a slit on one side of the felt tags.

Birthday Goodie Bags

Ever since my oldest son's 4th birthday I have been making the goodie bags for his parties.  I don't like those plastic ones.  The kids take them home and throw them away.  I like the goodie bag to be one of the goodies that they take home and use again and again.  I also hope that they get passed on to younger kids when the other child is to big for them.  This will be the 2nd year that I am making them out of printed fabric.  My son is having a lazer tag party.  I couldn't find any fabric that matched the theme, but this black birthday fabric works great.  I am making them the same way that I make my reusable shopping bags, only smaller.  I need to make 9 for this year.  Seven birthday guests, the birthday boy, and his little brother.

These are the fabric goodies bags from last year's water themed party.

This Pikachu one is from his Pokemon birthday party.  It is made from felt.  I just used fabric paint and google eyes to decorate it.

Here is the back of the Pikachu one, a poke ball.  I started painting these 3 months early, because I was pregnant with my 2nd child.  I knew that he would be born before the party, and that I wouldn't have much time to work on them after his birth.

I think Elmo was from his 5th birthday.  It took a long time to paint all of the Elmo faces.  I prefer to attach the child's name to the handle so that it can be removed and passed on to another child.  The soccer one was for his 6th birthday.

The back of the Elmo bag is fake fur and google eyes to represent some of the monsters on Sesame Street.  The back of the soccer one had glow-in-the-dark paint and the child's name.  I had to make about 27 of the soccer bags, because he wanted to hand them out to his whole class.  He opted to not have a party that year and do something special with us (mom & dad) instead.

Bags not pictured: Spiderman, mini golf, and the webkinz tiger.  The webkinz tiger was the most labor intensive.  I had to fuse a forest printed fabric to felt.  Then I machine applicayed fake tiger fur to it, along with fake white fur for the cheeks.  I embroidered whiskers, sewed on a button nose, and glued google eyes on it.  It looked great, and my youngest son still plays with his bag.