NSC LIVE! Simple Projects Using Coloring Pages

Hello, my name is Leah and welcome to our Q&A session today with the National Sewing Circle. We'll be spending the next hour or so, running through some demonstrations with Emily Steffens who is waiting in the studio, we'll be with her in just a moment. And of course answering any questions that you have along the way through those demonstrations and after. We'll spend as much time as possible getting to as many of your questions as we can. But before we dig in, I would like to take you through a download that is available for you today. It is called "Activity Pages for Quilters and Sewers." This is coloring pages for kids, pages to practice using a sewing machine. And you've got two packs of coloring sheets that Emily herself created. So hopefully Emily is gonna give us a few more details on that, as we head on over to her in the studio. Hello Emily, how are you today? Hello, it's good to be here. This is so exciting. It's good to have you in this studio. So what have you brought for us today? What kind of demonstrations are you doing? Do you wanna talk a little bit about that download those coloring pages? How would you like to get us started? Awesome, so I have coloring pages, and I'm gonna talk about colors, how you pick colors for projects and patterns, and kind of getting some color schemes, 'cause I feel like that is an endless question for a lot of people. And then I have some ideas and projects of how I kind of turn these simple shapes from coloring pages or doodles, into projects. Great, so I'm gonna give a little reminder for anybody that is watching. As we're going through this show, you wanna drop your questions into the chat box, and as Emily is going through her demonstrations I'm going to pull in any questions that are specific to what she's talking about right away. We'll interrupt and get that going. And along the way, if you have any other questions as well, we're going to get to as many as possible, in the next hour. So get those questions rolling, I'll keep an eye on that chat box and I'm gonna send it back over to Emily to start with her demonstration. Awesome, so the question I feel like I get most often is color, color, color. I'm a lover of color. I love color . I dress in a lot of color. Our house has a lot of color in it, and I'm constantly doodling. So the kind of marriage of both works really well for our family and for me, and for my style. I doodle almost every night. I feel like, especially in 2020, it's nice to sit down at night and just get out my iPad and doodle. And, a lot of times those translate into coloring pages for my kids, or for myself , because coloring is really stress-relieving. But what I tend to do is simplify things down into shapes. So, of course letters and things, but even fun little, you know like, unicorns or dragons or anything. I kind of simplify them down into shapes which works really well for turning them into other projects. So I have a few of my coloring pages here. And the first thing I really wanna talk about is, color. Is how you get to color schemes, how you decide on color schemes, how it all plays together. Maybe you're making a quilt or you wanna make like a pillow applique. And the best thing I would say is breakout some markers. My favorite markers are these Crayola super tip markers. They're like 6 or $7 on Amazon or Target. And the reason I love them is because they have a lot of shades of color in them. So, for instance, if you are hemming and hawing over what color blue, to make the background of your quilt, or the background of your project, here's my suggestion for you. Take every shade of blue color that you have in your coloring box, and start playing with them. 'Cause I feel like you will start seeing patterns to what you like first of all, and, you can put colors next to each other, and see how they play off of one another. So for instance, this coloring page right here. I have kind of a more like tealish color next to a I don't know, baby blue, if you will, two different pinks and you'll start to see the marriage of how they work together. Another thing to notice is, on the big page altogether, you can see that pink dominates more than the blue 'cause, well there's more letters in this particular coloring page, but if you if you think about your quilt, or your pillow, or your zipper pouch project that you have, you can start to get a sense of what color you want to dominate in the color scheme of the fabric that you're choosing. So I often when I'm... I tend to deviate to the same colors over and over but I often will do that very thing. So, I didn't love this blue, so I changed to this more Aqua color, I would say. But if you're wondering, Hey, how does this Aqua color play with the Navy blue? Because it is tricky sometimes to visualize how finished products will be. Breakout your colors, and just start filling in, your coloring page. And this could be done in your kid's coloring book. This can be done on the free downloadables that Leah was talking about. Or you could even just start drawing on a piece of paper too, if you really wanted to. Emily I'm actually gonna interrupt you for just a moment. We had a little audio issue right at the top. So for any of you, either just joining us, or were here with us at the very beginning of the program you actually probably didn't hear very much about that downloadable page. So what Emily just mentioned is the coloring page download. You can that's called "Activity Pages for Quilters and Sewers." So these are coloring pages for your kids, for pages to practice while using a sewing machine. And there are two packs of coloring sheets that Emily created herself. So this is what we're talking about right now. There's lots of content coming your way with color and variety, and of course drop your questions in the chat box. Thank you for those of you that let us know that the sound was an issue. Hopefully it's fixed for you as we continue on. And we've got about an hour of time today. So plenty of time to get your questions in, start dropping them in. And I'm gonna send it right back over to Emily as she is filling out those colors, thanks Emily. Awesome, yeah, so I would say, you can do this on a blank piece of paper, your kid's favorite Paw Patrol coloring page or Princess coloring page if you're like my four year old daughter at home . Or any of the coloring pages that Leah just mentioned with those downloads. I do feel like, people get really, really, you think really really hard on color, and people often ask me, Hey, how would you know where to start? And my quickest answer to that is look around your house, look around what you wear, look in your closet, look at your favorite colors and simply start there. So if you're drawn to pinks, if pink is your most favorite color in the entire planet but you're feeling hung up on, Hey, what the heck color pink do I choose? There's a million options. I get it. I totally get it. Especially when you're standing in the fabric store, or heck, these days looking online, it is really tricky to know how to pair things together. So again, break out all the pinks, maybe you wanna throw in some purples or some other, all the shades, right? Which would be similar to a cotton solid, and start playing around with how you can put them together. And you may see, Hey, this is a really bright pink that I don't love next to this pale pink. So you can imagine, Hey, I'm gonna scrap that or reprint the page, and color it all over again. And you'll also notice too, this is another little tip. There's, just like with fabric, colors have of course like a slight variation, right? And you'll see when they're directly next to each other, what the variation is. If it's a little more cool, a little more warm, a little more pinky, whatever it is. So I think sometimes when you're actually putting colors next to each other, they play off each other in a really way that you love, or a way that you don't love. And it's an easy way to kind of flush out what you love. And you'll notice too, that you'll probably start gravitating towards colors that you love over and over. Like I tend to love warm colors, I tend to love a lot of yellows, golds, things like that. And you'll see, Hey, wow, I actually have a preferred color palette that I didn't know that I ever had. And coloring this is very mesmerizing . I agree with that. We've got a question coming in about the type of markers that you are using here. Did you discuss the type of marker that you've chosen first? Yes. Assuming that this is not a . Yes, so these are just Crayola. They're called Crayola super tips. And the reason I love them. is you can see this right here. This is the amount of pinks and purples we have. I love the shades they have, and it's a really inexpensive set of markers. It's 5 or $6 at Target, Amazon. Any big box store will carry them. And you'll have a good variety to be able to play off the colors that you're choosing for your projects. Perfect, and just a quick note you'll find in the chat box itself, a link to download some of these activity pages that Emily is working on. So if you're wondering where to find that link, you can check right in the chat box and it's there for you to click on. Awesome. All right Emily back to you. Awesome, okay, so once you've kind of played with color and I feel like this is an age old never ending thing to kind of play with colors, 'cause sometimes I love a lot of pink. Sometimes I don't love a lot of pink I feel like in the stage of life am in . So once you're kind of playing with those, the one thing that I love about coloring pages or graphics that are all around you, is, I wanna show you this. On this coloring page you'll see that I've doodled. This is one of the downloads that Leah was talking about. You'll see that I doodled these sort of flower icons on the edge right over here. And I translated that, these little just simple shapes. It could be a close tulip or a wildflower. I'm not really sure what flower it is, but I've translated that. And this is what I wanna show you, into this shape right here. So do you see how the shape for this, mimics the shape of this flower? It's not exact, but it's pretty darn close. And that's sort of how I got the idea to applique this pillow. So it's kind of what I wanna show you next, is how to take these simple shapes and turn them into projects. So of course you can find shapes like this on Pinterest, or in, like I said a coloring book or on one of these coloring pages and they can be translated into simple projects. This is a simple shape, right? It's this background shape. And then the lemon layer, the lemon pulp. If that's what you'd call it, the white part. And I turned it into, it's just a swimsuit wet bag for my kids to throw their swimsuits in so they don't get my car all disgusting. This over here, is they were lips that I doodled on a Valentine's day coloring sheet. And these can be thrown in a lunchbox for Valentine's day for your kids. You could put popery and put them as drawer sabers in your dresser. If you really wanted to to make sure that your clothes don't get musty. You could string together and put them as a garland, which is what we did in our house Or, same shape, different project, right? So this became, a little Valentine's day zipper pouch, which is really fun. And then, they can become even smaller, right? So here is, some little peace sign. Should go this way . Peace sign plushies that are again, just a really simple shape. And the biggest difference between, I would say these lips and these is that I used a running stitch with some embroidery thread to outline the outline. So it wasn't cutting out the thumb or the two fingers, or these other two fingers. I cut it out as one simple shape and then added detail with my embroidery floss. So that's what I wanna show you today. Here's another example of, a little rainbow that you can throw a key chain on, just like this one. You can put palms on it, you can not put palms on it. But from these doodles, or from these icons that you have, from the coloring sheets, this is the example of the coloring sheet that I'm gonna work from today. And it's just some ice cream cones that I doodled. A basket, a triple scoop. And all I did, this is just printed as the PDF. Like you'll see that Leah talked about. And then all I did was enlarge it on my printer 200%. So if you want to be able to cut exactly what these are, all I did was enlarge it, and cut out one of the shapes. So this one was right here. And I'll show you how I'm gonna turn it into a backpack pole, because school is coming. So, I work from background to foreground as if you were painting. If you're a painter you know that is a thing, that you do. And so I will take. I broke this is another one. So you can see them side by side. I broke them up into simple shapes, and I'm gonna cut out the cone, and then the ice cream scoop. I'll also wanna cut out the background that it's on, right? As another color, or an accent. But basically what you can do, once you've enlarged it on your printer, you've cut out the shape or the pattern that you want. And you could enlarge this gigantic and make this a huge ice cream pillow. You could enlarge this medium-sized from here, and make it a zipper pouch. You could make it, I don't know, an iPad case if you really wanted to put your iPad in the top of it. There's really endless opportunities of what you can do. So there's the cone, and there's the scoop. So I am going to, just cut it out pretty roughly, doesn't have to be perfect. Well, we have a question coming in while you are cutting Emily. Jared Lee is asking if you have any recommendations for writing materials for how to trace on your fabric without ruining it. Yes, I use chalk a lot. I don't know if that is maybe the preferred method with every single kind of fabric. I would recommend testing it, 'cause I guess I would be unsure if it would soak into some maybe specialty fabrics, but I trace with chalk. So you very easily could take this shape right here. And if you wanted your kiddos to be involved in this, you could easily trace this shape with chalk. And I use a pencil sharpener and just sharpen my chalk with pencil, because it will give you a more pointed tip line. Trace around here if you wanted your kids to help you. I do know there are fabric markers out there, I tend to never have them at my house . So chalk is what I use a lot. It works really well with felt, because you can erase it with just smudging your fingers. And I feel like chalk is a thing we always have at our house, which is easy, easy to have. On that topic here. Kyle is following up with a question about felts. Is felt the best fabric to use? And what did you use for that swimsuit pouch in particular? That's a good question. So, let me show you. I love felt because felt is really tactile. I love the texture of it. I love that you can stitch it together. You can stitch it together and there's no fraying. That's one of my... This is why it was one of my favorite substrates, and it's really colorful . You can't go wrong with that. So that's a really good question because this pouch in particular, was made with just a cotton. This is just like a Kona cotton solid of some bright yellow. And then if you can see, this is actually felt on top of it. And my kids have used these bags for two summers and it doesn't wear, and it doesn't fray which is why I really love felt. And then I've lined it, just with like a, it's actually the waterproof like handmade diaper material , that makes it so that the swimsuits can go in there and not get my car smelly and wet. And I also feel like here's another plug for felt. I also feel like one of the pros of felt is that it's super kid friendly. And it is easy for kids to cut, 'cause it's a solid or substrate. It's a thicker substrate. So it feels more substantial and less flimsy. 'Cause when you're teaching a kid to cut for the first time, at least my son, through fabric to make a pattern or something if you're not doing the rotary, which is a feat in of itself to teach your kids, it's an easier thing for them to hold, right? Without like flapping everywhere. So we tend to love felt when we're making little projects like this, which is fun . So, you'll notice that, I am . Let me go back and get this corner right. I am simplifying this cone shape 'cause this will go over top, right? So there's some details that you can kind of envision, Hey, if I'm gonna layer it on top of each other, I don't necessarily need these indents that the doodle has. So I'll cut out my ice cream cone to lay over top of it. Which makes it also easy for a kid to jump in and help with. I'm gonna make this one, this bright pink. So we have a light pink and a bright pink ice cream cone. And the thing to notice too about these doodles, is this ice cream cone has little sprinkles on it. This ice cream cone has diagonal things, and this ice cream cone has a typical kind of cross hatch. So I can, if I really want it to be fancy, cut out each one of these diamond shapes out of various colors of browns or grays, if I really wanted to. But what I think would be really fun, 'cause remember with this one, I outlined the fingers with embroidery floss. This one could be really cool to do the same, and make the embroidery floss crisscross or cross hatch. Like the cone would be on here. Or you could just leave it plain. You could make it as simple or as complicated. I think the simpler the better for kids. The more complicated, the more fun for an adult, for you to be really creative. So I'm gonna cut this other ice cream cone. One more for another question or two. Yeah, absolutely. All right. You got one revisit. So the bag that you were just featuring with the two types of fabric, you mentioned cotton, we had a guest that missed that. So what kind of cotton was it that you mentioned? Yeah, this is just like a Kona cotton solid. It's just 100% cotton. You could use truthfully probably anything in your stash that you have. That's any substrate. I chose cotton because I knew I love the color, first of all. Second of all I knew that felt would adhere or sew really well onto it. And I knew that it didn't really matter what the outside material was for where, because the inside material is this waterproof diaper material. So it was more the color, and the ease that I use. The other thing is that cotton is a little bit thinner than felt, or a polyester blend. So I knew I was making this curved shape, and it would be easy, to do your clipping and turn it right sides out to make it a nice, easy shape. So I didn't have to fight with the corners as much. But I think, the thing I try and tell my kids when we're making projects all the time is, have fun with it and play with it. And you know what, if I would have used the wrong fabric for this, it's 100% totally okay, because I could have just remade it . It was a complete failure. So I think the thing that I wanna encourage people in with both color and with substrate, is to try it and have fun. And that's truthfully how I came across how much I loved felt. It was something I had in my house, and I kept making stuff with it and thought, Hmm, I really love, I love how tactile it is, I love the texture of it. I love all the colors it comes in. So, I think sometimes we can get a little bit afraid to try new things. And I'm always telling my kids, just try it, just try it, it's okay. Now one more question about felt. I feel like it's been the theme of the episode so far. Danielle wants to know if you can wash felt very well or will it ruin it? You can, so, there's two different kinds of felt that are out there. And I actually have both here. So, you can't really tell when you're looking at it, you kind of have to feel it. But there's the kind of felt that you can buy at a bigger box store, or that you find often. And that's a polyester felt and that's this one right here. The thing you can tell about this is you can stretch it. And it's probably not super obvious on camera, but if you see how I'm pulling this, it's not really keeping it's sorting puckered, it's a polyester, and so it's a totally, it's a man-made substrate. So you can pull it. It's trickier, I think to cut, because it's, well that was not a good example, but it's tricky to cut because if you don't have sharp scissors, it can be really hard. You have kind of to saw through it. This kind of felt right here that I have that this pink is, it's a wool felt. So it is, it does still have a little bit of polyester in it. It's a 70% wool. And I think Joanne's is starting to carry more of it. Michael's is starting to carry more of it and you'll see it if you go look in the felt on the bolt, and that is, you can tell it's thicker, which maybe you can't tell on camera too well. It's a thicker substrate. It usually has less Fleck in it. Do you see the difference here? Less Fleck in it. And this is a little bit variation. This is a really, really solid pink color. And, it does not stretch at all. It's a wool blend material. So it's a wool and polly blend, whereas this is 100% polyester. So that's not necessary bad. It's not, nothing is right or wrong about it. But to answer your question, I feel like the polyester felt, sometimes if you wash it over and over and over and over again, it'll get pilly. Like, you know, like a wool sweater will get pilly. And this has been washed many many times, and you can tell, there occasionally I've taken my scissors and snipped off the pilly parts, but it has really lasted well. I don't dry this because of the lining. So that is maybe something you could consider. I don't know if honestly, I don't know if drying would matter for felt. I don't typically dry any felt projects. If you're a knitter you'll know that to actually felt something, you dry it and wash it on high. So I would imagine if I were to dry this, it would shrink a little bit. The felt would shrink on it. But I honestly don't dry it, but I wash. I throw it in the washing machine like six or seven times probably more than that, six or seven times this year. And it's held up really really well. And I think it may be if you'd be careful maybe just hand wash it but, I wouldn't see that it would be a huge problem. And speaking of that bag that you just had out, Mary is wondering, would nylon work for the inside of this one too bag? Oh yes, it would. It totally would. I think nylon would probably be awesome. I don't use nylon a whole lot just because it's slippery and I have to use a lot of pins, and it feels like a shenanigans. But I feel like it totally would. My goal with this inside fabric, was simply to make sure that it was waterproof that my kids could throw their goggles, they're wet swimsuits, crumple up a towel, 'cause we all know that's how kids put towels. They crumple it up into a tiny ball, throw it in here and it zips, and they throw it in the back of my car. And this was all inspired because, two summers ago, when my daughter was little, she was just starting to do things on her own. There was many swimsuits that ended up in the trunk of my car that I did not remember where they are, so it made my car very smelly. So this was what ... Well, all the moms in the world can probably say an amen. That we've all been in that position. What's that smell? All right, so... That you were talking about, Sandra wants to know where can she find the wool blend felt that's not on a false? sells on a bolt that Joann fabric. Yeah, they have, I know there's like greens and more natural colors for sure at Joanne's of this is this wool blend. Honestly, online there's a ton of places, if you Google wool blend felt. There's a lot of little quilt stores. Your local quilt store will probably have it. Now I'm unsure of how that all works. But, I do feel like a lot of local places, a lot of little places have, and they are on bolts still but the bolts are shorter. So it's usually by 12 inch height usually. I don't know that that's always for sure the case, but they're shorter. And I feel like the colors are so fun to play with. There's a local shop in Iowa, that I get a lot from and, it is blanking me on what the name of it is. Something woolen, woolen something. I'll think of it, I'm sure. But it is where I get all my wool felts and I buy it by half yards. So it's, you know, 12ish inches tall by half a yard which works really well. Okay, so there are any more questions about felt? Not coming in right now. We'll go right into the demo. I will let you know if something else pops into the chat box. So all I'm doing here, is breaking this doodle. 'Cause remember it came from this coloring sheet. I enlarged it by 200%, which came to this, cut out the ice cream cones I wanted, and that's what gave us these. And now I'm breaking. I broke them up into simple shapes. So now, we have our two ice cream cones, and I can cut two, so that if I really only wanted my ice cream shape to be, what my backpack pole or my plushy was. But what I wanna do, is put our ice cream cones on a brighter color. So now, these two color... these two shapes I'm done with for right now. And now what I'm gonna do, is cut two, because obviously you need a front and a back. Cut two of, this background. And there's a crease in it but it's not gonna matter when we sew it all together. Maybe I'll go this way, yeah. I'm gonna do this one actually so you can see it better. There we go. So I'm just gonna make a rough outline cut, from so that you get this outline where we're essentially appliqueing, hand appliqueing or hand stitching this ice cream cone onto the foreground or what the top would be. Now while you're cutting out, we wanted a reminder. Someone's asking for a reminder of the name of the markers that you were using earlier. You had crayola. Yes, crayola super tips is what they're called. They are wonderful. We buy, I feel like I buy a new set for my kids' stockings every Christmas and for myself , because, why not? Perfect, thank you. Of course, so this is the rough outline. And now this one, I think I am going to add in when I'm doing it, my little sprinkles on it, 'cause that will make it really fun. This is a pretty simple project. So all you'll need to start sewing there is just two stitches and you for sure, could do this on a sewing machine. This one is on a sewing machine where I stitched around the edge, stuffed it, and then stitched right through the middle. This is on a sewing machine. This one's hand stitched. So it just depends on, I really wanna make sure that I get that in a hand done look. So I'm not gonna do this on a sewing machine. But grab a few colors of embroidery floss. Any brand, any colors will do. I'm gonna grab some pinks, for the sprinkles, maybe off an orange. And we'll start from there. I feel like this is the nature of embroidery floss. It doesn't matter how much you organize it, it becomes a giant tangled mess. No matter what you do. Probably doesn't help that I'm shoving it in a jar . So, what I like to do is, start with just the foreground, so that's this. So again, think like a painter where you're working background to foreground, just like we cut our shapes out. And the first thing I'm gonna do is applique the entire front. So, I can take this off if I don't want it to fall but I also could just hold it in my hands. And this is a really fun project to get kids excited about hand sewing. Because they could do an emoji, a Pokemon, again, anything that comes from coloring sheets or something that they love. That's a simple project or a simple shape, excuse me. So all you're gonna do, is start sewing. I'm gonna take that guy off. Hand stitching, and I never do knots in my, but you could knot this if you really wanted to but I don't often tie knots in my strings. I'll just hold it. My granny used to say, knotting is rotten and I don't know if that's true but, I feel like I just have to listen to my grandma . She never tied knots in anything. So you're just gonna do a simple, running stitch to get this guy on. And you can make the stitches as chunky, as long, as small, you could do a loop stitch if you really wanted to be fancy. This is where the fun and creativity can come in. And if you don't want to have a coordinating color, you could find a matching exact color here to match the brown or to match the pink. I tend to really like, the contrast. And this one also has a little contrast too. We have a question it's a little bit ahead. You had mentioned the sprinkles, instead of sticking for the sprinkles, are you able to use beads or something like that? Oh yeah, okay, do you remember, maybe this was, this I feel like is a 70's ish thing. The felt applique where you would use a, not an embroidery floss, but you'd use regular string, and you'd stick it through the felt, put little tiny beads on it and then beat it and then stick it back through? That was like from the 70's. I feel like that would be, absolutely amazing for something like this. Or, you could use those longer beads too that people have all the time. I feel like I beaded all the time in middle school. So I feel like it's the more the merrier and if you really wanted to, you could even do more advanced embroidery techniques like maybe French knots or, some overlaying of those backs. I think it's called back stitching where you split your stitch and you go back. That could be really cool too to make it a little bit more, bulky or chunky on top of the fabric. This needle is a little dull so, but this tells you that you can totally still do this with kids because it's not a sharp needle at all and it still goes right through the felt. So I'm just doing a running stitch to keep this on. And eventually, we will get to where we're layering. Again it's background to foreground. So, this would be similar to this color right here. And then we're gonna lay this right on top to make our ice cream. And this is also another way too, that you could play with color. If you know that you're gonna do a really big quilt, that you're gonna invest a lot of time and money into, or you're gonna make a series of pillows for your brand new living room or something. Doing a small project like this, will 100% get you more comfortable, with the color because you're staring at it, you're using it. It's a smaller bit of fabric. You may go, oh my word, I don't like this yellow at all. I want something that's more bright. Or I want something that's more orange in color. So I feel like sometimes these small projects give way to larger projects, that in a way that can translate especially for color or shape even too. Right, I'm gonna take a moment here while you're still finishing up those stitches, just to do a little refresher. We're past our halfway point for the hour, so of course keep your questions coming in. But I would like to remind anybody that is just joining us, that where this project started, was with a free download. So you can access that free download, it's "Activity Pages for Quilters and Sewers," and that includes coloring pages. And again, those can be for your kids, but it can be pages for you to practice using a sewing machine, practice your coloring. Emily's been talking about those color schemes with markers that you can play around with on those coloring pages and then enhance them on your printer, and bring them to life with a project like what Emily is doing right now. As always you can access this later. If you've missed part of the question and answer session, you can go back and find this on the page later and watch it in its entirety. But, from here until the end of the hour, we'll be taking questions as Emily is leading us through this project. So I'm gonna send it back to Emily, as she's finishing up this stitch. Awesome, so I'm just finishing up this running stitch. I'm not being crazy careful that it's so close to the edge, or super close together, because I don't, I just want it to attach essentially the background to the foreground, or the middle ground, I would say 'cause the foreground is gonna be this ice cream scoop. So, what I am gonna do here is, now add my ice cream scoop on top. So I can continue to use this thread which I will, because I really like the fun punchy yellow or I could tie it off and get a different color if I really wanted to. But essentially you're gonna continue the same thing around here. So I'm gonna do part of it, and then I'm gonna show you how to finish this plushy off because, this is a really fun project that I feel like, can really relieve some stress and give you a fun finished thing. This is the only bummer about embroidery floss, is that it's thicker. So it can get knotted really easy, but make sure if that does happen, here's a little tip. Make sure to pull, usually it's because this is your tail is too short or too long, too short excuse me. If you make it a little bit more even, it will feel more substantial, and it won't get as knotted. Usually I feel like that. So I'm gonna do a few more of these, I'm gonna show you the blanket stitch on how to finish it and then I'm gonna show you another applique too. So, go around the edge just like you have with your running stitch. This could be really cool. I'm just thinking of this as I'm going. See some of these ideas turn into bigger ideas. This could be really cool to play with different stitches also. So what I mean by that is you could use, I think it's called a satin stitch or a whip stitch but it's like the satin version of the whip stitch, where you'll whip it around the edges. I'll show you, this could be really fun. It would make it look a lot thicker. So you'll go, always from the top, and whip it towards the background, see the difference there? I'm going from pink to yellow instead of just all the way on the pink. And it would give it a little bit more, maybe definition. You can do them close together or far apart but that could be a really fun way to do it as well. I'll do a couple more. Isn't watching somebody craft so fun? It's always inspiring to me. So when you are done appliqueing your entire ice cream cone, or turtle, or dinosaur, or flower, whatever you're doing, now is the time, to start doing a blanket stitch on the edge. And that is what this is right here. So it's a way to finish it off and give it a nice finished edge, and then we'll stuff it right before we're done. And remember, these can become key chains, or this one doesn't have a key chain, and it's just a little rainbow that my daughter loves to sleep with and hang out with. Or you could have a whole bunch of them and turn them into a Garland for a birthday party. So to do-- I'm gonna interrupt again with a question that's come through. I believe this might be the direction you're taking this right now. Yeah. on Facebook is asking, would it be easy to make these projects more 3d, more like stuffed animals? Yeah, Oh my gosh, yes. If you, 100%. So these ones are only stuffed just a little bit, right? But, I would say the way to make an easy stuffed animal, is to kind of make a 2d, 3d, stuffed animal if that makes sense. So you're gonna take this same exact idea. Imagine that your, I dunno, your ice cream is huge, like a pillow, sort of almost, right? Or a stuffed animal. And you could easily make obviously your pieces bigger, and you can finish it one of two ways. The same exact way we're doing, just make it bigger and stuff it fuller, which would only mean you'd need to make your background a little bit bigger, or, you could run a gusset around the edges to make it really 3d. And it could become like a pillow stuffed animal plushy sort of thing, which I feel like every little kid loves, right? So to do this blanket stitch to finish it off. All I'm doing, whoa is looping, pulling it through, and before I pull it all the way through I'm bringing this around, so that it brings the stitch to this side. So up through both layers, and of course I'm pulling it through every single time accidentally. There's a loop, put it through. Pull it tight. Up through both layers, before you pull it through. Loop and pull it tight. And so what it does, is it creates a finished edge here, and a finished edge on the side so that when you stuff it, it stays like that. But to go back to that plushy or stuffed animal 100%. You could even make these lips, into a really fun pillow, right? So cut out the exact same thing, two different lip shapes. You could sew it the exact same way on a machine. So around the edges, and then so right through the middle to make them two puffy lips. That'd be a really fun pillow actually. I feel like I should make that. And then you could write, you could have secret little phrases coming out for your Valentine, off the mouth. Little like, you know, fabric phrases. That'd be cute. So, okay, so this stuffy, finish the edges, stuff it. Embellish it however you want to, this is how you would hand sew one of these appliques. I wanna show you this pillow one more time because I wanna show you the difference between the hand sewing and the, oop, I'm losing all my embroidery floss. The hand sewing and then the machine sewing. So just the same, that I took my coloring sheet. So, I have my inspiration coloring sheet for my plushy here. This one is similar to this shape, right? Like it's just kind of the simple flower outline, and this is 100% wool felt. So it's a little bit, just a little bit different. It's very similar, but it still doesn't fray on the edges, and this is machine embroidered. So all I did, this is an Ikea pillowcase. I didn't even make this pillow case. The pillow stuff form. I didn't even make it because it was just easy to buy it for $6 and then applique on it. So all I did, was again, take the simple shapes. So there's the outline, right? This is this general idea of the outline, right? This little outline piece as well, outline piece. And then the little half circle. And I decided when it was this large, because when you're making this shape, this large, it looked a little plain. So then I just cut out some little teardrop shapes and added those on there. So again, I worked from the background to the foreground, so back to front, and I cut out the two background pieces, and then put these over top of it. And this is all machine stitched, just with a normal stitch. And I added a flower, or a fern leaf, and a stem. And that's the fun of using these simple shapes to make something, embellished or embroider it, or turn it into a zipper pouch, or a plushy or anything really. The sky is the limit. Do we have any questions about color? Again since the very beginning of our session, was a little bit wonky with sound. We do have a couple people that are still curious about that bathing suit bag. And I know you talked quickly about the differences in felt, so we have a question asking specifically if you use wool felt, and also could you talk a little bit more again about can you wash that bathing suit bag? What are the considerations for doing so? Do you dry it? Instantly run us through that again? Yeah, totally, so, all I did was use again these simple shapes that I've been talking about. So I cut this background yellow, out of just a Kona solid cotton. It's just a 100% cotton. And I chose it, because of the color truthfully. And I knew that it's a little bit thinner of a substrate, so it's easier to, you know, clip the insides here and make this shape curve really nicely. And then I decided, because I love felt, one of the reasons I love felt is that it doesn't fray. You don't have any fraying on the edge and this bag has been washed a lot. So I decided to do felt for the applique part, ran the sewing machine around the edge, put the zipper on. The inside is this, wet tolerable material. It's, excuse me, it's the homemade diaper lining material. And this has been washed a ton. I did say that I never throw this in the dryer simply because of this inside lining material. 'Cause you're not supposed to wash I think the same as with wax fabric or any sort of lining fabric like that, because the heat from the dryer won't work well with the fabric. So that's why I never dry this. It actually isn't because of the felt that I don't dry it, it's because of the lining that I don't dry it. But I chose felt because it's easy to applique, I know it works really well with cotton. And I also know that I don't have to, a lot of traditional applique you're doing a satin stitch along the edge which essentially your sewing machine is doing a really really tight zigzag, to make sure that there's no loose ends that fray. And I really like how chunky, and how kind of graphic, going around the edges looks. That's a little bit closer to the inside rather than being super close to the edge. But it works really well. I wash it often with my kids, for my kids at the beach and it's great. I just don't dry it. All right, thanks for taking us through that again. Yeah. All right, we're gonna run through, we have about 10 minutes or so left. So if you have any questions, either about the project that Emily was running us through for this entire session, or anything in general that you'd like to ask Emily, I'll be keeping an eye on the chat box for these last 10 minutes or so, keep your questions coming. We'll ask as many of them as possible. I'm gonna send it back to Emily. If you have anything you wanna add on, about the demonstration that you just finished up or any other thoughts that you'd want to lead us into this tail end of our hour, go for it. Awesome, I think the big thing that I think is a good takeaway with color, is that color or any of these sort of projects we've been talking about, is I think that sometimes as makers we get into our heads about wanting to make a finished project absolutely perfect. And we forget that it's okay, that we're just trying things. So I think that's the heart behind why I do a lot of coloring, and a lot of playing with doodles and things is, it isn't always a 100% perfect that I'm picking out the right pink, so the perfect pinks. But by just jumping in, and going for it, and trusting your maker's intuition and your makers gut, if you will, you'll try things, and you'll see what works. You'll see what doesn't work. You'll see if a zipper pouch is exactly how you envisioned it, or if it's a complete failure. And if it's a complete failure it's totally okay. But I think sometimes, we really wanna have a perfect finished project, and all of this is here to encourage us just to play, to try new color combos, or new shapes, or new techniques, or new sewing stitches, or whatever it is because I think we can end up at a much cooler, much more colorful, more fun finished projects if we just let ourselves create and stop looking at some of those boundaries that stop us sometimes. That sounds good. So, I have a question for you. When you're talking about, playing around with the color and everything like that, do you use scraps a lot to play around when you're transferring those markers and color schemes to projects where you're actually pulling together some of your felts so that you are making the most of what you have available? Yes, I have a huge scrap bin. It's just like a big wire basket, that even these pieces like super small, probably wouldn't think much of it, I save this all the time. And as a matter of fact here's a fun fact about felt. You can, I think this one, this plushy right here is actually filled with felt scraps, 'cause I ran out of polly, and I feel like at the beginning of quarantine, it was too tricky to go to the store or figure out how to get it, because Amazon was out and all these places were out before everybody was doing curbside. So in a pinch, you can always use your fabric scraps to stuff, your plushy, or to stuff your anything that needs to be like this. And I feel like you also can use them to test, right? You even could put color next to fabric to see exactly what you think, if you'll love it or hate it in a small or large amount. That's another way to play with color. If you wanna lay out. Let's say these are all fabric scraps, lay them out and start laying them on top of each other, in a way the same way that I talked about using markers in a way that you would with little fabric scraps to make your finished project your pillow, or your quilt, or whatever it is. But I save them, I use them for everything . There's no scrap too small. Perfect, we have another question coming in from Maureen. Maureen asks for any sewing machines that you recommend for simple projects for clothing. She's getting ready to replace hers. Awesome, I'm a Janome girl. I love Janome sewing machines personally. And I sew on the 9450, which is a little bit bigger model. It has the touch screen on the side, but I just got my son and you'll love this because it's aqua color. It's actually this color right here, this blue color. I got my son it's called a fun color sorbet, I think is what it is. And I love it. And it's kind of a more, I would say higher end for kids, a little bit more entry-level for adults because it's a really good sewing machine, and anything that has like a, I would say a metal inside. So not the toy plastic sewing machines, they of course all have plastic on the outside, but the metal inside of it, is gonna be something that will last, it will sew through zippers, it will do buttons, anything for garments, it will do felt, it will do leather. Anything like that would be sturdy enough, and have the power to go through it, but wouldn't be so complicated, that's super expensive or has features you wouldn't use. All right, well, thank you. Oh, Mary has a question, a clarification point on one of the words you just used. Mary wants to know what you mean when you say polly. When I say what, polly? Polly, yes. Yeah, so polly would be like a polyester fabric. Like a polyester blend. A lot of t-shirts have polyester in it. This felt has polyester in it. And there's, it's just a, it's a substrate part of a fabric usually. Great, a short cut if you will. A little Yeah, a slang . So we're slang I guess. Okay, well I don't see any other questions rolling in. So I'm going to give anybody watching if you would like to put in a question, you've got another minute or two to do so. I'm going to ask Emily to ness out with any specific color, small project based tips that she wants to wrap up the hour, and if any other questions come in in the meantime I'll feed them through right at the finish. Go ahead Emily. Awesome, I would say my biggest thing, have fun with color, play with color, whether it's scraps or little projects, markers, use your coloring sheets, use those graphics that are around you to inspire you to make these little projects, because it's really amazing how a little doodle that you see could inspire a swimsuit wet bag or a little doodle into a backpack pole or something. So let everything around you inspire what you're doing for sewing and don't let it stop your creativity. All right, we have one last question and it comes in from Valerie. Valerie wants to know what type of machine needle would you use to sew through felt? Ooh, that's a really good question. So I feel like, a lot of, so there's the general needles right? And then there's like specialty needles for leather or other thicker substrates. Every sewing machine company will have codes or colors for what those needles will be. So depending on what sewing machine you're using, a Janome, a Pfaff, a Bernina, a brother any of those sewing machine companies. If you go to Google and you Google Brother sewing machine or Janome sewing machine needle for felt, it will tell you exactly which one to use. I use, I think it's a red tip needle for Janome because purple is embroidery, Red is for thicker fabrics. And if it doesn't say exactly for felt, you'll want to use one that can use a little bit, can handle more dense fabric. And the reason is, is because it will be sharper, so it will be able to go through something that isn't just a cotton, and it will be able to pull it through better. So it won't get so stuck up or gummy from the residue of a thicker fabric. So if you don't know specifically for your brand Google it, or just make sure if they don't have something exactly for felt make sure it's the one that's used for more heavy duty sewing, or heavy duty substrates. All right, well with that, I am going to send you off with a few reminders. First of all, thank you so much to Emily for taking us through that demonstration, having some fun with us today. Thank you to all of you out there for your questions, for tuning in. A quick reminder about that download, it's called "Activity Pages for Quilters and Sewers," and you can find that for free, that's coloring pages. Emily was showing you how to use some of those. I'm sure you can come up with your own ideas. Even if you didn't have a question today, I would encourage you to check out the chat box. We've got a great community of people that have been viewing, and there are some ideas that have been tossed back and forth throughout the entire event in the chat box, along the way. So it's always worth taking a quick scroll through there. You'll also find the link to that free download. And this entire event will live forever on the National Sewing Circle page. So if you missed part of the event, or if you ever want to revisit it, or any of our other live events that are available they will be there for you on that page. And on that note on behalf of Emily, and the National Sewing Circle, my name is Leah. Thank you so much for joining us today. And we hope to see you next time, take care.