cutie-pie tutorial

Dare I say I have my act together? The following is the tutorial promised for the “cutie pies” I posted last week.

MATERIALS

• Felted wool sweater – If you don’t know how to felt a sweater, see this former post.
• Wool felt
• Steam-a-Seam double sided fusible web
• Felt balls – I bought these, but they are easy to make yourself.
• Needle and yarn

Cut a circle out of the Steam-a-Seam (mine is 7″ diameter). Peel off paper from one side and fuse to the solid wool felt, following product directions. ***(1/3/07 UPDATE: Please note, I corrected a mistake in this post. The diameter I used was 7″, not 6″ as orginally posted. Sorry!)

Cut the solid felt out around the edge of the Steam-a-Seam. Remove remaining paper.

Place fusible side face down onto wrong side of sweater felt. Fuse and trim out circle. Be sure your work is totally fused around the edges so it doesn’t de-laminate once your start bending it around. I like to cover it with a damp press cloth and go back at it with a lot of steam.

Make a sundial…no, wait, just kidding. Place your felt balls around the perimeter to get a feel for how many you’ll need. I used 14. There’s is probably some kind of “pie-R-squared” formula to calculate # of balls based on circumference, but that’s just not my style…

Thread a needle with yarn, double stranded for strength. Start to sew through the felt circle, through the ball, then back through the felt again. I started about 1/4″ from the top edge of the felt and went through the center of each ball so that the tops of the balls would peek out a little.

Keep going making sure that the felt wraps about half way around each ball. Keep adding balls, alternating sides of the felt circle.

Stop and check about halfway around the circle, making sure you have used half the balls from your “sundial” estimate. Scientific, I know…

Keep going around until you’re back at the beginning. When you’re happy with the look, knot the yarn in an inconspicuous place. This one took me 2 tries to get it to space out right, but it went pretty fast regardless. Felt is pretty forgiving as long as you don’t expect it to be perfectly uniform!

I think these would look really fun with various size felt balls or beads as well. Do me a favor and send me your photos if you make some cutie pies of your own!