My newest craft

Those that have known me know that I love to craft. Those who have known me a long time know that I have tried my hand at almost all crafts at some point or another. Well, a while back I saw this episode of the Martha Stewart Show (go figure) that had needle felted sweaters for children. I ran out at bought bunch of wool sweaters to shrink and felt.

And there they sat. Shrunk and felted and in a drawer.

Until yesterday, I finally pulled them (all 6!) out of the drawer to figure out which one was going to become Grayson's Christmas gift.

So the whole idea, is to repurpose an adult wool sweater into a child's sweater by washing it in hot water and shrinking it into felt (exactly what you are NOT supposed to do with a wool sweater!) Then using the pattern good ol' Martha provides /see funny story at end/you cut them down into these little wee sweaters. Then the fun begins.

You take Roving (wool before its spun into yarn) and using a barbed needle you punch the roving into the sweater to create your design. You can do anything! Grayson loves dinosaurs so this is what I created for him:

Its his pet Dino!

and his tail that wraps around the back of the sweater. :)

Dino is green with some light green dots and a blue color and light blue leash.

I love it! I hope he does too.
Now to hang onto it and not give it to him until Christmas...

Woops forgot the funny story! So I took the patterns to Office Max for enlargement. The guy doing it seemed a bit confused by the whole thing. Basically it is an 81/2 x 11 sheet of paper that has a sleeve, front and back pattern that needs enlarged to either 200%, 225%, 275% or 300 % depending on the side for this kiddo. So he gets one sleeve done hands me the sheet and says "Is that all you need?" I am sure my eyes said "Yum, all my children wear arm warmers instead of sweaters!" But as nicely as I could, and with out using the word DUH, I said no I needed the whole pattern, enlarged to each size listed on their coorsponding sheet. It worked out fine but I almost slapped him silly....