fabric charms finished finally...

And I only have three incomplete attempts prior to these charms. I started out with an idea to needle felt small birds...um yeah, small and needle felting equals stabbed finger tips which ultimately equals a very unhappy Amy. After I scrapped the 3d bird idea I thought I would needle felt roving onto felt to make 2d birds...not much room for detail in such a small piece so they looked like blue dots with a couple spots here and there. Ugh. Then I tried using the fuzzy, fluffy underside of the needle felting and embroidery to make monster faces...again small killed the deal. However, thanks to small, I have some good ideas to work on in a larger format.

Anyhoo, I finally went into the studio and stared at my wall of fabric, dug through my drawers of fiber and beads and buttons, and eventually came up with these. I stitched different fibers across two pieces of the batik background fabric and then sandwiched a piece of wool felt between the two embellished fabric squares. I sewed lines (perpendicular to the fibers) spaced a quarter of an inch apart to bring all three pieces of fabric together. Then I stitched the borders of each charm and used pinking shears to finish the edges. I sewed the little forget-me-not beads (that Dawn gave me last year or the year before; thanks again, Dawn!) along the center line and attached a steel wire jumpring to the top of each charm. I didn't have time to package up the charms the way I would've liked so instead, I attached each charm to one of my business cards. That way recipients will at least know who made the charm for them.

I am pretty sure with the next swap I do, I'll be back in the swing of things as far as usual presentation goes. I'm sort of looking forward to it. Hey, if you know of any good swap sign-ups going on, tell me about them!