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Thursday, February 7, 2013

Drake's Felt Name Book


 
I just love to hand embroider on felt.  Felt cuts cleanly, comes in beautiful bright colors, and is pretty kid-resistant.  So when my son turned one, I made him a name book. 
 
I started out with the letters of his name, and stuck with animals as a theme.  I had seen a few beautiful books on crafster.org (so fun to peruse the crafts on there for ideas!)  I turned to Google images to start looking for images to use.  I'd use search terms like "xxx clip art" or something, so I narrowed the search down to cartoon-ish images.  
 
Once I found what I wanted to use, I turned to Powerpoint.  I made an 8"x8" box, since a felt sheet is 8x12, and I wanted a square book.  From there, I pasted my images in, played around with different fonts, and when I was done, I printed each page.
 
 
 
 
I then cut out the images and the text, and used them as templates to cut out the felt pieces.  I didn't use any glue or anything to hold each piece down, I just held the pieces to the background with one hand and stitched with the other.
 
I LOVE this site for embroidery stitch how-to....they have a picture dictionary where you can just look at the stitches, and click on the one you want to learn how to do: 
 
 
 I did mainly backstitch on the pieces and blanket stitched the pages together, but I did do a few fancier stitches in places.  I also added a few decorative buttons, and sometimes embroidered a few things completely, with no felt (especially if it was a tiny detail like the bird on the R page).  I typically used 3 threads for the embroidery.  I think I used 2 for the eagle to get more detail in the wings.  And I used the full 6 threads for the blanket stitch on the edge.
 
If you didn't know, a drake is a kind of duck, so I went with that for the cover:
 
 
D is for DRAGON

 
R is for RABBIT

 
A is for ALLIGATOR

 
K is for KANGAROO (See the K in the Australian flag?)

 
E is for ELEPHANT

  
R is for RHINOCEROS

 
E is for EGRET

 
E is for EAGLE

 
D is for DONKEY
 
 
 
 
Close up of the bird on the R page

 
Bird button on top of the tree


 
 
I have completed the pages of Violet's book.  Of course she turned one in December, and I haven't bound the book yet with the spine.  Hopefully this post will urge me to finish it and post pictures of hers!

2 comments:

  1. That is the most amazing thing I have ever seen. You really have a talent lady!

    ReplyDelete