~:: How I Have Felt About Things ::~

Long ago, somewhere just around the dawn of time, my mother gave me McCall’s Golden Do-it Book. It was this huge book of kids’ projects, and the very first chapter was “create with cast-offs.”  You were supposed to gather wooden spoons and match boxes and candles and broken crayons and canceled stamps, leaves and twigs – the kind of overlooked things you have just lying around the house.  And then make things with them.

There were also chapters on printing, sculpting, toys, weaving, stitchery of all kinds, knitting, dolls, music, puppets and gifts.  I thumbed through that thing time after time – and I wanted to make this thing.  No, that thing.  No, I wanted to do that. But I never really ended up doing any of it.  I was just a kid, and it all seemed very hard and complicated.  But I think my mom thought of this stuff as something I could do why she was doing her own stuff.  She was a nurturer and an organizer and a launcher and a manager.  All really good and productive things.  But she wasn’t really a maker.

It wasn’t that she never made anything, because she did – she made us dresses, and even doll dresses, and was ace at custard and chocolate chip cookies and managing money.  She was doing all the time. And she liked it that I made things.  I just don’t remember her sitting down and making things with me.

I guess the point is this:  the fact that Mom bought that book for for a seven year old in the first place tells me I must already have been a Maker.  And exposure to the book over time must have exacerbated what was already there to begin with.

But this is about felt.

I discovered the charms of felt early on, but my first memory of actually making stuff with it was in New York.  We had this Christmas issue of Better Homes that featured a collection of felt Christmas ornament birds – exotic, made of felt and embellished with sequins and bugle beads and tiny felt shapes.  I made a ton of these things.  But now, I only have one – which is pretty good, still, considering how many decades ago that was.

There were a couple of patterns.  This one and a more horizontal in-flight one.

From that time on, felt was a medium of choice.  In high school, I made a series of little cats, my own tiny design, and that’s when I began embroidering my little things.  (And I think I only have one of these, left, too.)

In college I got interested in folk embroidery and ended up doing a little placket I’d designed for a fairly horrible muslin dress I’d made.  The embroidery wasn’t wonderful, but it’s proof that there was at least some hippie in my conservative little sixties soul.

Also in college, the year I finally bought my own Christmas tree, I made a series of small birds as gifts.  I’d long ago improved on the shape of the original New York birds, making them smoother and sweeter.  This shape was all over the margins of my college notebooks—little birds escaping lecture halls.   I made a rainbow of these Christmas birds, each one with a carefully embroidered design on its wings, my interpretation of the friend the bird was meant for.

I wonder if any of those guys still have their birds?  Why do I doubt it.  I kinda wish I’d kept them myself.  College kids.  Sigh.

Later, I turned the bird into glass.  From line on paper to felt to glass.

Over time, the shape morphed a little.  I borrowed someone else’s single piece tail for the glass and came up with the present, simpler glass design, based on the original body.

When I was a grown up, I was still in love with felt Christmas ornaments.

I made a herd of these the first year we lived in our house.  I made a red one for the very first Christmas ornament party, about thirty one years ago.

There’s just something about flannel and blanket stitch.  This was a prototype I did a couple of years ago.

The flip side.

Lately, I’ve developed a taste for buttons and felt.  I’ve never been much of embellisher, but Sue Spargo woke a taste in my hands there.  And somewhere, I saw a cute felt pouch embellished with a button-anchored flower.   Then Real Bad Kitty’s work really grabbed me by the face.  So I started making these – just little joyful tokens.  They took several evenings each, but they made nice valentines for my daughters.

So, anyway.  There’s my creative offering for the month.  I could do a tutorial on these if anybody is interested, but really – it’s all pretty self-explanatory.  I wish I could make one for every person I feel kin to.  I wish I could just stop making things and read a book.  Or dust.  Or write something.  But there you are.  Felt hearts.