The bear and the country cottage.

Instead of making stuff for my Etsy shop (or at the very least catching up on my circle skirt), I spent the day indulging in some selfish sewing. :)

I fell in love with this little change purse on Etsy a few weeks ago and had been planning on making one for myself. Today I finally got around to it. Isn't he adorable?? {I also love this one from the same shop!}

The ears turned out a little longer than necessary, but other than that I'm in love with it. By the way, the mustard wool isn't really that bright...I think I accidentally left my camera with the white balance up. The white nose on his face isn't quite that bright, either.

The brown fabric came from an old tweed-ish pair of pants. The lining is a cute yellow polka dot print that Mom got me at a yard sale once and I hadn't had a chance to use yet.

I've had this book for a while, and though I love every project in it, this is the first one I've made from it. The country cottage! From the book:

My version:

I want to make tons of these and have little plush villages in my room and the craft corner. :) The black stitching lines can be done with hand embroidery, but I did like the author does: dropped the feed dogs on my sewing machine, took off my presser foot, and did a little free motion stitching. It's like drawing on fabric, and it looks a little messy instead of having the "perfect" look that hand embroidery would.

Can I just say how much fun it is to make something that you can be sloppy with, but still have it turn out cute?

The white part of the house is craft felt, but the rest of it is wool blend felt (Fancy Felt). After working with wool blend, I almost hate to mess with craft felt. But I only have a little wool blend right now and I use it very sparingly. :) It is expensive, but it's so lovely.

I used all of my fabric and felt scraps from today to stuff the cottage, so it's nice and heavy and I recycled pieces that I would normally throw away!

I had so much fun making these two projects today. To be honest, sometimes it's not that fun to make wallets or cozies all day for the Etsy shop. So it's nice to have a day like this.

Until next time,