Julius and Patricia are so darn cute. Julius has been able to get hold of his emotions and has been having less melt downs. He still has a few but he usually runs in the other room and does “snake breaths” and then runs back in smiling and hissing, all proud of himself. He’s constantly asking Will and I “can you play with me”? And he wants us to act out little adventures with his animals. This morning he built his favorite little choking hazards animals two “street sweepers” and drove them around the room to “Rhode Island to get vaccinated because they went in the grocery store without a mask on and are sick now”.
A couple days ago Patricia hoisted herself up from a sitting position on the floor to standing, so she could stare into the bathtub while the water was filling. I was completely amazed. She is desperate to be mobile! She hasn’t quite figured out crawling yet. Will took a video of her doing this inch worm thing to move across the floor. It works, but is not terribly efficient. It is cute though.
We have started seeing people again. I’m going to tell you right now, it is weird. A couple people came back in town from far away, so in order to see them we had to get outside our cushy comfort zones. It is really nice to see people again, though it makes me realize how rusty I am at interacting with people in person again. Looking people in the eyes? How weird. You mean I can’t just stare at the video preview of myself while I tell my story?
So today is the last installment of Patricia’s bug mobile tutorial. This fabric poppy would look even better if you used some kind of crumply stiff fabric… but the mobile was felt, so I stuck with felt. I used a bunch of different crazy colors to match the Icelandic poppies on Patricia’s curtains and I’m glad I did. It adds a happy rainbow of colors to the mobile.
Felt Icelandic Poppies
What You’ll Need:
- felt in color of choice for petals
- lime green felt
- yellow felt
- yellow embroidery thread
- needle and thread to match petal color
- stuffing
- Pattern here
- Cut out center of poppy in green felt following pattern. Cut petals in color of your choice following the pattern. Cut a 2″x1″ strip of yellow felt.
- Cut slits in strip of felt about 3/4″ long and 2mm apart. This will be the stamena.
- Take green circle and sew a running stitch all around the edge leaving a long tail on your thread. Stuff with a tiny piece of fluff and pull up fabric around it to form a pistil. Tie tails of thread together.
- Take 3 strands of embroidery floss and stitch through the unfinished edge of fabric pistil, over the top, and back through the other side. Pull taunt. Repeat two or 3 more times, spacing out your threads so they look like spokes on a wheel. Knot and trim.
- Lay your flower petal pieces on top of each other so they form an “x”.
- Place pistil in the center of the “x”.
- Stitch straight through the petals and pistil from back to front, loop over all the strand of embroidery thread and back down through the center again and through the petals. Knot.
- Place the yellow stamena piece around the green pistil by forming a rough ring. Overlap the two unfinished ends.
- Fold the petals up and stitch through one petal near the bottom, through the stamena, through the pistil, back through the stamena, and out through the opposite petal.
- Repeat step 9 going back through the other two petals. Knot.
