36th project completed! A felted mobile phone sock

Last week's project started me thinking about the stuffing left over from the pillow. A saw no reason why the filling couldn't be used as a backing for needle-felting and with embellishing machines as a ground to work on. I have been meaning to use one of my favourite photos of my daughter when she was little in a project, so I had a play and came up with this. A felted mobile phone sock for her to keep her phone safe.


it is a reasonably quick project and one for those of you who are looking for an excuse to experiment.


Materials needed

• Stuffing from an old pillow
• A small amount of merino wool tops
• Small shell beads
• Sewing machine
• Embroidery threads
• Embellishing machine / Needle-felting needle and pad
• A small piece of lightweight water soluble stabiliser

Instructions

1. Pull out a section of stuffing and flatten out to about the size of an A4 piece of paper. using an embellishing machine or needle-felting tool and pad, felt the fibres together until you have a stable base.

Before felting                                                        After Felting

2. Lay some wool fibres on top of your base as above then using the embellishing machine or needle-felting tool, felt together the fibres until they make a stable background. Put to one side

3. Using a small piece of water soluble stabiliser, trace off your motif (in my case, my Daughter). And pin in place onto your background

4. Using straight stitch and with your feed dogs lowered carefully fill in the motif. 

5.Once finished tear away the stabiliser to leave your embroidered motif on your background.

6. Fold your 'panel' in half lengthways, checking that the position of your motif looks OK and trim to the right size for your phone plus a little for a seam on two sides. Stitch with right sides together then carefully turn the right way out.

7. You can now add some beads etc. for detail. I had some small shell beads lying around so I added those. There we have it a lovely mobile phone sock and a lot of money saved by using stuffing rather than lots of wool tops!