Stuffed Felt Totoro

I love Totoro, and so does the girl whose name I drew for Secret Santa. I didn't know what to get her, and I didn't want to get her something boring that she would rather just buy herself.

My sister has a stuffed Totoro that she bought, so I used it as inspiration to make a stuffed one out of felt. Originally, I was going to make one with a needle felting tool and wool roving. I watched a YouTube video tutorial on how to make one, and I bought a needle and used some grey felt I had at home. But I guess the felt that I had was too thick, because the pieces would not bind together properly.

 

I have more experience with sewing, as I have made fabric flowers and hair bows and a collar and detail on a collar. Using a few pieces of colored felt, I drew out a pattern and sewed together a little stuffed Totoro. I added a heart to the back, along with a tail.

<3 Mandy and My Neighbor Totoro

Crazy Crafting Times (and crepes)

This morning my friends and I made crepes for brunch! We filled them with chocolate and fruits. They were yummy.

my crepe, filled with strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, nutella, and chocolate chips

I made some friendship bracelets for each of them, for some other friends, and for myself.

hearts for lovely friends

 

Also, my friend whose house we were at gave me this awesome button! It's pretty self-explanatory why I love it... Thanks, Bri!

And an update: I've made a lot more chip bag purses this summer, for a total of 11 completed bags since my last post about them. Still a lot more to go, though, seeing as to how many I have yet to assemble...

I've been making tons of crafts lately, as well as finding tons of inspiration, so I'll be busy with more DIYs until the summer runs out and the new school year begins.

<3 Mandy

Valentine's Day DIY

I found some of my pink felt last weekend and was inspired to make something, and since Valentine's was coming up I thought I would dress up! So here are some pictures of the process, from plain grey shirt to heart-ified.  There are heart elbow pads with quilted stitching, and the collar has flower petal shapes arranged into a heart with gold beads.

Anyways, Happy (Belated) Valentine's day!

Note: I did not yet have this blog on Valentine's Day but made this shirt for the 14th of February.

I began with this plain, grey, collared, 3/4 sleeve shirt:

I cut up (about 15) little petal-shaped pieces of felt about the size of my thumbnail and began sewing them onto my collar

I laid them out into this pattern at first, but when I took a step back, I realized it just looked like a pink blob on my collar...

So while playing around with the organization of the cut-outs, I came up with this heart:

After sewing the heart on my collar, I cut out hearts for elbow-patches and safety-pinned them onto my shirt. (You could make a shirt with just the elbow patches or just the collar patch if you wanted to, but I added both to even out the distribution of color on my shirt)

I then sewed on the heart-shaped elbow patches using a quilting technique (to prevent lumpiness after washing the shirt) and added gold seed beads to the collar heart

Collar heart with bead detailing around the stitches

 

And there you have it! A lovely Valentine's shirt, even for those of you who aren't in love with pink. The little pink hearts are just enough to show your holiday spirit without overdoing it.

xoxo Mandy (your Valentine)