The Felting of the Fox

So, last August while I was on bed rest with nothing but crafting to do, I ordered all of these little critters from Crafty Alien. For one reason or another, it took two months for her to send them to me which meant that my plan of getting them all done before the babe showed up didn't happen. And now here we are a year later and I'm just now finishing a couple of them (I did get the owl done before Will was born).

I was going to do a tutorial on felting but...I forgot and only took a couple of pics. So, it's probably not terribly helpful, but I'll post the pics anyway.

All the pieces knit up and ready to go.

Soak for 5 minutes in hot, soapy water. Then roll and squeeze each piece around in your hand until the individual stitches disappear.

All of the pieces are now felted. Stuff with batting and shape as desired. Allow to dry overnight.

Attach parts and applique face, etc. Allow to roam free.

Will loves the owl but it took him a few minutes to warm up to the fox. He seems to like it here.

Ok, so I'm pretty bad at following directions and have to read things a million times to understand what they're telling me. And even though I read the instructions many times, I still missed a step or two. Haha. So, this fox has plenty of mistakes. The white belly was supposed to be appliqued onto the body pre-felting, which I did not do. And the tail wasn't supposed to be stuffed. Haha. So the tail is like...as big as the body and the fox can't stand up at all. It's pretty comical.

I still have kits for a squirrel and a raccoon but felting the fox and the deer in the same night kind of burned me out. So we'll see when I get to those. However, the raccoon kit has gone MIA. Typical.

Hurray! It's done!

The cradle is done! It turned out better than I could have hoped for, considering my lack of painting skills, but thanks to lots of help from my little bro Ivan we got it done. The green turned out to be the exact color I wanted -- and now that this is done I feel like I'm pretty much ready for this baby to show up. Only 7-ish more weeks (hopefully)! I'm so so so happy!


Oh, hey what's that little critter?


It's a felted owl that I started yesterday and finished this morning. Isn't he adorable? Ruth sent me a kit from Crafty Alien on Etsy to entertain me while laying around. It was so much fun that I'm planning on getting a couple others -- I'm thinking the raccoon, the deer and the beaver. Adorable, no?

P.S. The quilt in the cradle is from Pottery Barn Kids -- Cottontail Friends.