Think Crafts Blog – Craft Ideas and Projects – CreateForLess

By Kid’s Craft Contributor, Gillian from the blog “Dried Figs and Wooden Spools”.

I love bracelets and I’m always on the hunt for a new one. But with the cold weather outside, I haven’t been wearing one, not liking the chill that I feel when the bracelet gets cold against my skin. The solution? A knitted bracelet!

Here’s what you need:

Bulky weight wool yarn

Size 10 knitting needles

Fabric scissors

Large button

Fabric measuring tape

Yarn needle

1. Measure your wrist and add one inch, this will be your knit length.

2. Cast on 10 sts. Knit as follows

row 1 – K1 P1 across

row 2 – K1P1 across

row 3 – P1K1 across

row 4 – P1K1 across

Repeat this pattern until you are one inch from your length (this is a double, vertical seed stitch)

Now make a buttonhole:

Knit in pattern for 3 sts. Without knitting, cast off 4 sts. Slip the last active stitch to the other needle and use it to make 4 new stitches. Finish knitting in pattern. Turn piece and continue to knit in pattern for 3 more rows. Cast off in pattern.

3. Try on your bracelet and mark where your button needs to be. Stitch into place and try it on!

By Kid’s Craft Contributor, Gillian from the blog “Dried Figs and Wooden Spools”.

Oh, wool roving, where have you been all my life? I had no idea how much fun you were. What with the bulky knitting and the needle felting that you can be used for. And now? Felt beads. So fun, so quick, so addicting to make. No really, these are quick and simple and so much fun. You can even make a few in between washing dishes. How many crafts can you say that about?

Here’s what you need:

• Wool roving, colored or not. Whatever strikes your fancy
• Hand or dish soap
• Access to cold and hot water

1. Grab a wad of roving about three times the size of the finished bead you want. If you want to make a bunch that are the same size, it’s best to weight the roving pieces before you get felting.

2. Pull the fibers apart and layer them into a rough ball shape. Run this under a little water.

3. Soap up your hands and start rolling. Don’t press of squeeze and resist the urge to roll roughly as you would with playdoh. It helps to cup your hands slightly to help keep your pressure light.

4 Keep a-rolling, rinsing the ball now and then and adding more soap. As you roll the bead will get harder and harder and smaller and smaller. Once you see that the bead is no longer absorbing much water, it is fully felted. Pour a little boiling water over them to shock them a little and tighten up the fibers.

5. Allow the beads to dry before using them, this can take a day or two depending on the size of the bead.

By Kid’s Craft Contributor, Gillian from the blog “Dried Figs and Wooden Spools”.

I’m big on knitting, especially in the winter. And I always have several projects going in my workbasket. Which means that there are several balls of wool, often getting tangled up with each other. And that makes a huge mess. So lately I’ve been separating my yarn balls into little felt baskets. It makes grabbing one project out of the mess easy, keeps the yarn separate and keeps the ball from rolling around when I’m working. And they couldn’t be easier to make. Think back to your kindergarten days when you learned to weave. Over, under, over, under. If you can do that, you can make this basket!

You’ll need

1/4 yard of wool felt
Jar, vase or bowl, about 5 inches in diameter and 5 inches tall (square or circle)
Clothespins
Hot glue gun and glue sticks
Fabric Scissors
Ruler

1. Cut the wool into 2 inch wide strips.

2. Flip the bowl upside down and lay the strips across the bottom, weaving them so that they cover as much of the base as possible. Carefully flip the bowl right side up so that the strips are laying around the bowl and the woven part is on your table.

3. Clip all the strips to the top of the bowl with the clothespins.

4. Using more strips, weave in and out around the sides of the bowl until you have reached the top. Clip the excess and glue the ends of each strip together, tucking the join under one of the upright strips.

5. Unclip the clothespins and carefully slide the bowl out.

6. Fold the ends over the top strip, trimming them to be just long enough to tuck under securely. Glue each top strip in place.

Crafts-a lot Contributor, Mable who is an avid reader of craft blogs & magazines and has aspirations to improve her crafting skills.

It’s not quite October yet, but I’m still getting ready for Halloween! I made these very cute and very quick Halloween decorations with my Clover Pom-Pom Maker. Make some spooky spiders, friendly ghosts and Pumpkin decor out of yarn!

The Clover Pom-pom maker is quick and easy to use. Once you start making pom-poms your mind will start running with ideas on how to use them; they are just so fun. Watch the video below to see how to use the Pom-Pom maker.

For the Pumpkin pom-pom decoration, I used the large pom-pom maker with orange yarn. I used a green chenille stem for the pumpkin stem and curled it to make it cute. Lastly glue a small leaf on top.

I think the spiders are my favorite! I plan to hang these around my front door. To make the Spider pom-pom, make a large and a small pom-pom with black yarn. The small pom-pom is the head, and the large is for the body. Glue these together and add legs out of black chenille stems.  Glue wiggle eyes on last.

This blog post was adapted from a Project Sheet from Clover. Click here to see how to make the Friendly Ghosts!

By Kid’s Craft Contributor, Gillian from the blog “Dried Figs and Wooden Spools”.

Why is it that every new pattern I decide to knit needs a size of needle that I’ve never used before? Or maybe I have the size, but it calls for circular and all I have are straights. I think it’s a conspiracy. Keeping track of all of my knitting needles has never been my forte. So between the need for new sizes and styles for every project I do, and my habit of sticking needles I do have in random drawers, I feel like I’m always buying yet another set of knitting needles. Well NO MORE. I am getting organized. And by organized I mean that I made myself a needle case to keep all those needles safe and sound and in one place. So next project I start, well, I wont be buying duplicate needles for it you can be sure. I haven’t quite collected every size known to man so there is always the possibility that I’ll still need to go out and buy more, but at least this time I’ll have a place to put them!

Because I didn’t want to spend time hemming or lining, I chose boiled wool felt for this project. But it was a toss up between the felt and some very pretty oil cloth that I bought the other day for something…I’m not sure what yet. The Felted wool felt won out because when I think of knitting, I think cozy, and oil cloth, not so cozy.  Any fabric that you don’t need to hem (fleece, vinyl, regular felt) would work. Or, you know, you could hem it. But why bother?

Here’s what you need

Fabric – 10″ by 16″ – or whatever size you need to fit the length of your longest needle and lay out all or most of your needle sets
Contrasting fabric – 10 inches by 6 inches – or the same width as above and around 1/3 the length
Coordinating thread
Sewing machine
Pins
Ribbon – 12 inches or more

1. Lay your fabric out flat with what will be the bottom of your case facing you.

2. Pin the smaller piece of fabric so that the bottom edges line up and the sides are even. Pin in place.

3. Tuck the ribbon, folded in half, under the edge of one side of the smaller piece of fabric so that it is sandwhiched into place. Pin and sew around the sides and bottom.

4. Place a pin to mark the width of each pocket for your needles. You’ll want to think about the size of the needles you have for this. Smaller needles need narrower pockets otherwise they will fall out. You’ll want to make each pocket about the width of three needles set side by side.

5. Stitch up from the bottom to form each pocket.

6. Insert your needles, roll up toward the ribbon end and tie! Now if I can only find a way to keep track of my patterns….

Congratulations to Ruth Ann who was randomly selected as the winner of Free Stuff Friday and the  Clover Template Trace N Create Zieman City Bag!  And the Clover Yo-Yo Maker in Large, Extra-Large and Jumbo.

The Clover Nancy Zieman Trace N Create Templates will help you create projects that will give you the status “designer” among your friends. Talk about versatile, these collections have style options from sophisticated to fancy. Choose your favorite fabric, gather your notions and sit down to enjoy the process of creating. The sewing is simple; the results are very rewarding!

Leave it to Clover to create a tool that makes it quick and easy to produce nicely shaped yo-yos. This new plastic tool helps you make evenly spaced stitches to create gathers that in turn lead to lovely circular and beautiful shaped yo-yos. A great way to create decorations, accessories and home decor projects.

Ruth Ann’s winning answer to  ”With summer winding down, what was your favorite thing you did this summer?” was…

“I hosted our Family Reunion at the cabin up north; for a whole weekend! Had a 100% turnout for 40 people! I had tents and campers all around the cabin and 5 people sleeping in my room! It was priceless!”

By Crafts-a lot Contributor, Mable who is an avid reader of craft blogs & magazines and has aspirations to improve her crafting skills.

I love Birthdays! My birthday was a few weeks ago, and I received the cutest gift bag from my crafty friend Kim. She made a felted cake with candles, and glued to the front of my card. I loved the idea so much I stole it and used it to make a birthday gift bag.

To start, gather these supplies:

Felt

Roving felt

Felting needle

Foam block

Gift Bag

Birthday Scrapbook paper

Hot glue gun

Optional: Birthday stickers, embellishments, die cuts

To create this cupcake felt appliqué, start with a square piece of felt. The first layer of felt will be the cupcake holder. I cut the bottom piece of felt in the shape of a cupcake. Lay the felt on your foam block, and take pieces of a different color roving felt and make long “snakes” by rubbing them in your palms. Attach the roving felt snakes to the bottom felt with your felting needle. To do this, push the needle through the roving felt into the bottom felt. Repeat this around the edges of each stripe on the cupcake holder.

For the cupcake top, I took yellow roving felt and formed a circle. I laid it on the round part of my cupcake bottom felt piece and secured the yellow roving felt with my felting needle. My cupcake was completely shaped with three small circles.

I decorated my cupcake with a flower also made from roving felt. To make the flower I made another “snake” from red roving felt. I attached one end to the cupcake, made a loop, and attached the other end to make each bloom. There were five loops to make my flower.

After my flower was done, it was ready to be glued onto the gift bag. I had decorated the gift bag by gluing 2 different patterned birthday scrapbook sheets down to make the backdrop. Next I just needed to glue down my felt cupcake with the hot glue gun.