Applique Madness!

As you could probably tell from my previous posts, I've working a lot with felt and appliques lately. Here are my most recent creations:

Fried Egg iCozy

This is the first felt cozy I made. For some reason, the idea of a fried egg gracing an iPhone cozy really amuses me. So naturally, I made it. I was quite pleased by this design, but decided that any future cozies needed a flap and closure apparatus of some sort, and stitching along all edges. Hence:

Wolf Man iPhone Cozy

(A close up of the ferocious beast, and an innovation in design.)

The inspiration for this particular cozy came from an opportunity and a challenge. About a month ago--while shopping for the felt for our Christmas stockings--I found some awesome little stencil booklets. Each booklet had about 6 stencils and cost $1.50. My brain instantly went into overload with all the crafting possibilities and I bought a booklet each of monster, farm animal, dinosaur, and zoo animal stencils. The monster booklet caught my boyfriend's attention and he instantly demanded that Dracula grace his Christmas stocking.

Later that day, I mentioned that I had been collecting and creating designs for electronic cozies. Our friend, Louis, suggested that I use the monster stencils. I must admit that I had thought of this, but I had already discovered that the stencils were just slightly too big for an iPhone of iPod cozy. But he was adamant. And, once he pitched the idea to my boyfriend he was impossibly adamant as well.

(Monsters galore!)

And so I got to work trying to figure out how to 1) pick the most suitable stencil and, 2) shrink it to fit a 2"x4" square of felt. Louis and Evan had advocated for the skeleton, but I settled on the werewolf stencil for one simple reason: it was the only stencil with which I could fuse its multiple pieces and still retain the essential shape while making it just the right size.

The color palette was simple enough: wolf man had to be brown, and the only color that would accentuate his shape while standing the test of everyday use was red. Using my fabric pen, I traced the wolf man shape onto the brown felt and then carefully cut the pieces out so that I couldn't maintain the intricate details. I then used a little felt glue to set the applique in place. After the glue had dried a bit, I used a blanket stitch to anchor him in place and sew the cozy together.

50/50 Wallet

Why 50/50? Well...I didn't actually make the wallet. Rather, I bought from Island Provisions and then embellished it with my own, first-ever iron-on applique.

(What can I say, he likes squirrels.)

I'm quite proud of my new semi-self-taught skill that I learned mostly from this video. I do, however, take credit for figuring out the specific characteristics of my iron-on material and how to properly use an iron.