Blue Ribbon Rosette ~ Tutorial

My daughter has a fun little my first pony book that she was given on her birthday a few years ago and inside was a game to play and little paper award ribbons to give to the first, second and third place winners. Well over the years the paper rosettes have grown rather worn and we've replaced a few ourselves but this time I thought it would be fun to make a really nice one out of felt that would really last and share the tutorial on how we did it with you :)

As this was supposed to be her project with just mama supervision I got her to do all of the tracing and cutting so you might see in some of the photos that there is a little bit of black ink showing on the tips of the felt ruffles :)

We started with a glass that was 3 inches in diameter, using it as our template for our ruffled rosette and traced twelve of them to be cut out of our felt.

Once our circles were all cut out we moved onto the next step of folding them into little triangular sandwiches by folding the circle first in half and then in half again just like in the photo above for just 10 of them....

and then started to space them as evenly as we could around one of the leftover circles.

This part is a little tricky so I helped her out and to make it a little easier on myself for the spacing I took four of the folded circles and placed them onto the base at the north, east, south, and west compass points so that I had a rough idea of how far apart to put the remaining pieces.

As you pin each one down you want it to overhang your backing by about a 1/4 to 1/2 an inch. You definitely don't have to be precise! But you do want to have that extra space so when you sew on your final backing at the end it will hide any embroidery stitching and so on that will be visible on the underside.

With all of the pieces pinned down she used a bit of regular cotton sewing thread and hand stitched all the way around the base of each of the points to tack them down in place.

DON'T remove  your pins yet! Trust me keeping them in will keep your rosette nice and stable as you continue to work on it :)

So with everything stitched in place we used a smaller glass, this time 2 inches in diameter, to make our rosette center. It really doesn't matter what sizes your glasses are as long as they are both roughly 1 inch different in diameter from each other.

She thought it would be nice to use a darker blue felt for the center and I agree that it really did make the rosette pop! 

I helped again with this part, embroidering the first place onto the felt with white embroidery floss and just using a running stitch to secure it to the front of the rosette.

You will notice that you still have one of your 3 inch circles from the very beginning left over and this is going to be your backing. You will also need to cut three strips of felt 5 inches long and 3/4 of an inch wide for your ribbon tails.

Position your three ribbon tails how you would like them to look and pin them onto the backside of your rosette with their ends far enough towards the center that they will be fully  hidden when the backing is stitched on.

To finish we just used regular cotton thread again and my daughter used a simple whip stitch to secure the backing to the underside of her rosette hiding all of our knots and not so pretty stitch work *grin*.  The final touch was to add a brooch pin that I luckily had but you can easily find them at any hobby/craft store or even your local dollar store may have them down the craft isle.

And that's it!

A super cute blue ribbon rosette for the winner in your household :)

You could personalize these with pretty much any little saying. They would make great birthday boy/girl ribbons, or don't forget about Mother's day that is coming up this weekend. I can see this with #1 MOM on it just for me *grin*.

Have fun making some :)

Hugs,

Rosina

Happy Mother's Day

Wishing everyone a happy Mother's Day!!
~ Rosina

Recycled Leather Cell Phone Case

My mom has to be one of the few people that don't actually own a cell phone :) I must say at times I envy that she doesn't have one as I personally don't like mine and conveniently leave it in the trunk of my car *grin*. Shhh, don't tell my hubby! LOL. He uses his for work on the tugs so chats on it constantly but mine is pretty much for emergencies only and I avoid it like the plague!

Mom has been hinting that she wanted one and when we switched our cell phone plan a couple of years ago we got new phones and my old one has been kicking around in the junk drawer ever since. So as a special surprise I've had it activated for her on one of those pay as you go plans :) There is no cell service where we live so it only works when we head into the city but it comes in super handy when trying to meet up with my sister or if someone needs something brought home. So the pay as you go will be much cheaper than having a plan as I'm sure the $10 card will be more than enough for a month.

I found some really great red leather scraps at an upholstery shop and a leather skirt at the salvation army that were perfect to upcycle into a snazzy cell phone case. Most purses are like giant manholes and just swallow up things as they go in... well at least mom's and mine are so I thought I would make a case for her phone to go in so that it might be easier to locate it when it rings :)

I wanted to give it a two tone look and started by sketching out circles on paper to figure out my design before chopping into the leather. Who knew circles could be so hard! It took me a bit to work out the spaces in between each one where I had my little peek a boo triangles as it looked totally different with the pen drawings than it did when you flipped it over and looked at it like it was the leather.

Next was putting all of the pieces together which was quite fun. I love figuring out all of the dimensions. It's like a puzzle :) In the past I have given my mom my phone to hang onto when I haven't had a purse and when it has rung she has gone into a bit of a frenzy scrambling to get to it before it stops ringing so I thought having a ribbon inside that popped the phone out of the case easily would be fantastic! I stitched a button hole shape into the backside of the case, clipped it open and slid some nice wide grosgrain ribbon through it and looped it inside the case.

It works fabulously! You pull the ribbon, it shoots out the phone and when you push the phone back in the case it slides the ribbon back down with it and you don't have to try and feed the ribbon back in at all. It does it all by itself! Love it!

I can't wait to surprise her with it tomorrow for Mother's Day :)

~ Rosina

The Butterfly Stalker

My daughter is a very persistent butterfly stalker always waiting in the garden behind a pretty clump of flowers just waiting to try and catch the elusive butterfly *grin*. Be warned though that her mood turns sour very quickly if she has to run around the yard to many times with no catching success! LOL.

And there she goes!
She did make one really cool find of what we originally thought was a moth in the first photo. It appears though that it is actually a Swallowtail Butterfly and from what I could find in my nature guides it may be Clodius Parnassian (Parnassius clodius) which apparently is one of three Parnassians that are found here on Vancouver Island.

If you are reading this and can let me know if I'm correct or if you know what it really is I would love to know!

~ Rosina

Farmer's Market Find

I had a lovely Mother's Day. My husband and I, our 3 children and my mom and dad went to Painter's Lodge for their annual Mother's Day brunch buffet that is literally to die for! Anything you could wish for... it was probably there *grin*. We always joke that my 10 year old son has a bottomless pit because he nearly eats us out of house and home but even this had him licked. I wish I had a photo of him at the end of the table after he had finished his 3rd heaping plate full of food. He looked like he might have just rolled off his chair like a drum. LOL.

After brunch we had just enough time to head down to the Campbell River pier to catch the last couple minutes of the Farmer's Market. In my opinion it's not really a true farmer's market since it doesn't have much produce, artisan breads and other farmy by products, but it is loaded with lots of talented crafters! One gal had gorgeous jewelry that I had to pry myself away from but just across the way I ran into a table loaded with wool rovings. Ooooh so soft merrino in the most amazing mossy green color and more :) Darn!! I should have brought more money with me *grin*.

Where was this table when I was desperately searching for wool 6 months ago?? I just had to grab one of her little needle felting kits to come home and play with :) For five bucks I got 6 bright colors and two felting needles. Not bad at all and I can't wait to dive into it! I've got some more rovings leftover that I had found at Whipple Tree Junction last fall and I may just have to get the kids into the fun and have a little wet felting party with them and make a bunch of felt beads for necklaces :) Oh the endless possibilities of wool!

I have a copy of Julie Collings book Pretty Little Felts on the bookshelf that is just crying out to be used to so maybe I'll have to use some of my rovings to create some of her sweet little flowers :)

~ Rosina

Strawberry Bonanza

Strawberry season is upon us and everywhere I turn lately those luscious red berries are calling my name *grin*. So I finally broke down and bought a carton of them :)

Yesterday morning I had my parents down and the kids and I treated them to a strawberry pancake bonanza! It definitely wasn't a good day to be counting calories since we went through 1/2 a litre of whipped cream in the morning and then we gorged ourselves on strawberry shortcake after dinner LOL.

You know that old saying 'a minute on the lips a lifetime on the hips'? Yeah, I'm pretending I've never heard about it either *grin*. Maybe I should take a power walk around the property tomorrow..... I think my thighs will thank me :)

~ Rosina

Mother's Day Card

Mother's day is just a couple of sleeps away and it has sort of snuck up on me this year! My kids are not old enough to go out and shop alone for a sure to be loved no matter what it is gift *grin* and with daddy away for work they're definitely going to be coming up with something truly unique! LOL.

Well if you are like me this year and a little behind in the card making or perhaps the hunt for the perfect card, then this super cute squirrel card by A Cagey Bee is just perfect :) I just recently met this wonderful gal through Etsy and she happens to be not to far from me on the mainland of BC. She is offering a free download of her Mother's Day card for anyone who would like to use it and she has a really great blog to if you have time to check it out!

Thanks for sharing it with us :)

~ Rosina