Learn how to make Business Card Holders out of Felt!
Looking for an Easy Sewing Project? Teach your child how to hand or machine sew with this quick gift idea. I’m going to show you how to make a felt business card holder with hearts or buttons for decoration and 3 ways to hand stitch.
We have a big event coming up where thousands of people from all over the world will be gathered and at the end swapping little gifts. So I have been searching for little homemade souvenirs for our family to give to the friends we meet. We might even get business cards printed-with our family email to put in the felt holder so we can become pen pals.
This seemed like an easy, fun, cute craft to make together. Plus teach some basic sewing skills…Brilliant!
You will need:
- 1 full piece of craft felt
- scrap pieces of felt for the heart
- scissors
- needle
- embroidery thread
- a business card
- sewing machine (optional)
- bright buttons (optional)
If you don’t already have felt and embroidery thread on hand you can get these from the dollar store, Walmart and craft stores.
I must admit, I am a bit of a felt hoarder-so I have bought mine from several sources. I found the felt sold by Hobby Lobby for 33 cents was the best quality and value.
One sheet of felt is usually around 9 1/4 x 12 inches (24 x 30 cm). This is the perfect size to cut into 6 business card holders. Fold the sheet in half lengthwise and cut along the fold. Fold one of those pieces into thirds and cut on the fold. (bottom photos) In the end you should have 6 pieces 4 x 4 1/2 inches (10 x 12 cm).
Have a business card handy to make sure it fits.
To get started cut small love hearts to decorate the outside of the card holder.
The easiest way to cut a heart is to fold the scrap of felt in half and then cut half the heart so both sides are the same.
Choose matching or contrast embroidery thread.
Divide regular embroidery thread into 2 sections of 3 strands each.
Knot the embroidery thread and begin sewing small stitches to attach the heart to the top of the felt.
Another idea is just to sew a bright button on instead of a heart. Teaching your child how to sew a button on and a simple hand sewing could really be helpful later in life.
A side note: Would you believe that while I was proof reading this my hubby has handed me a pair of his work pants and a button that just fell off. That proves just my point-thanks dear!
Fold the felt in half to form the little folder to hold the business cards. Here are 3 options we tried for hand stitching.
Whip Stitch: Knot the end of the thread and start on the inside of the fabric. Sewing in from the front and out the back and around. Back in the front a smidge to the left of the previous stitch.
Blanket Stitch: Start from the inside to hide the knotted end, then go through both layers. Stitches can be a bit further apart with the blanket stitch. Go in through the front of the fabric. As you pull the thread through, insert your needle through the loop and pull it securely to make your knot. Insert the needle into the front again the same distance from the previous stitches. At the final stitch go through a second time to make that knot and then insert your needle between the two layers of fabric and cut the thread.
Running Stitch: Knot the embroidery floss and begin on the inside to hide the knotted end. Use a running stitch to go in and out all the way up both edges.
My 11 year old preferred the blanket stitch. Not bad for her first attempt.
She also liked having one small heart over a larger heart.
The grey felt with red hearts with red stitching looks pretty good!
Option 2
To make the process faster (as I mentioned we want to make a lot of them)…we sewed the hearts on first and got a little bit faster with each one.
We hand sewed 10 hearts onto squares of felt and ran them through the sewing machine to make a tidy edge.
Could this get any easier! What a great idea…I want to thank my friend Ashley for sparking this idea over dinner last week. Great food, lovely ladies and a bit of craft talk snuck into to the evening…my favorite!
On this blustery, winter day you might be inspired to work with felt too! I have added links to a few of my posts from last year for you skim through and see if an idea is sparked for you too.
Sew a Super Easy to Make Felt Crown – Add to your dress up clothes!
100th Day of School Celebration-Glue Buttons on a shirt for a Gumball Machine
Make a Huge Black Infinity Scarf!
Make an Awesome, Huge, Black Infinity Scarf for $10 in 10 minutes!
I love scarves and I am almost always wearing black. So I was inspired to make a big, black infinity scarf from a photo I found on Pinterest. Unfortunately, I can’t find the original source.
They have done some fancy stitching on this scarf. That is a bit advanced for us. We are just going to make a really wide and long scarf for a similar effect.
https://www.stilechtonline.de/index.php?cPath=2
I want to give credit to the right folks if I include their photo….so correct me if I’m wrong. It appears to have come from a European website called…. www.stilechtonline.de, from a clothing line called Rundholz Black Label. Possibly from the Winter of 2014. I don’t understand it but I think the website language is German. They make very original styles of clothing and a lot of BLACK.
This inspired me to make a big black infinity scarf for myself. It turns out infinity scarves are super easy and take very little sewing.
You will need:
- black jersey stretch fabric (60×70 inches or 152x178cm)
- sewing machine
- pins
Fabric
Find jersey stretch fabric 60 inches wide (150cm) and have measured 70 inches (180 cm). I found my thin jersey fabric on a clearance shelf at my fabric store for $5 per meter. So this project cost around $10. It’s usually recommended to prewash the fabric.
Open the fabric up. Fold the side of the fabric that is 70 inches long in half.
Pin the ends together and sew down the seam. This is all the sewing that you need to do. If you don’t have a sewing machine you could hand sew it with a needle and black thread.
Fold the fabric in half again, sliding the top portion inside to make a tube. I chose not to sew up the bottom the way a lot of infinity scarves are. This makes it so you can adjust the shape of the scarf. I like to pull it over my shoulders a bit.
So for the cost of 2 yards or less than 2 meters of fabric you have an awesome, huge infinity scarf.
How to Make an Easy Infinity Scarf with Zipper Hidden Pocket
Easy to Make Fleece Hat with Flowers – Simple Sewing Project
Make a Super Easy Poncho!
This has got to be the easiest poncho plans ever! Using fleece or another stretch fabric means that you don’t need to hem it. So all it takes is one simple seam and you have a gorgeous poncho you will love to wear!
You will need:
- t-shirt, sweatshirt or fleece fabric 25 inches wide by 70 inches long (64 cms x 178 cms long)
- sewing machine
- 2 purchased tassels (I’ll get working on a DIY for making a tassel soon)
- needle and co-ordinating thread
Start by cutting your fabric to size. Cut it carefully to be completely straight. We aren’t planning to hem the fabric so take your time to make the cut as perfect as possible.
Then fold it in half.
With the fold on the left, measure 21 inches from the right edge of the fabric and pin it together along the top edge.
Leaving 14 inches for your neck hole, sew the remaining 21 inches. This is the one seam that you need to sew for this awesome poncho.
Now add on the tassels-by hand stitching them onto the bottom right corners. This is completely optional. If you don’t have purchased tassels you can skip it. I will make a post about making a tassel soon and link it to this post.
That is all there is to it! This poncho will look great with jeans and boots or dress it up for fancy occasions. If your office is chilly you could have one of these in your desk drawer. You should make a few!
Thanks for reading this post and I hope you will share it with your friends by social media or Pinterest.
Sew a Super Easy Fleece Poncho-Simple Starter Sewing Project
Easy to Make Felt Coffee Cup Cozy
Have you heard of a coffee cup cozy? It’s an adorable name for a glamorous coffee cup sleeve. Often used to protect your fingertips from the hot beverage take out cup.
Today I will show you how to make a felt coffee cozy for either cups from home or a take-out cup. As the weather gets chilly that means ice skating and winter sports (or standing still watching other people do winter sports tee hee…) that will have you warming up with a nice hot chocolate, tea or coffee. You need a coffee cozy to keep the hot inside and protect your hands. They look cute too!
You will need:
- felt (3 inch strip plus scraps for the applique)
- scissors
- measuring tape or ruler
- take away coffee cup
- needle and thread or sewing machine
Every cup is different so I recommend that you start by cutting a strip of fleece 3 inches wide and wrap it around your cup. Pin your felt in place to gauge the size you will need.
My favorite take away cup is a Grande Decaf Coffee from Starbucks (with cream and sugar and cinnamon and chocolate sprinkled on top…mmmm). That is also the size of the cups that they made into reusable plastic cups. Yeah! For my friends who live near Tim Horton’s, it fits their medium cups.
Read on to see details to make it this size.
Measure your felt and cut a piece 9 inches long and 3 inches wide. (23cms by 7.5cms) Fold the strip of felt in half.
Wrap the strip of fabric around the cup to see how it fits. Trim a small amount of felt on an angle to adjust for the shape of the cup.
Hand sew or machine sew the edge. Stitch close to the edge…approx. 1/4 inch (or 1/2cm). Fortunately, felt does stretch a bit so if it fits snuggly at first, it will soon be fitting comfortably.
Making the Flower Applique
Sorry there is no pattern made for this. I “eyeball” most of the time instead of using patterns. Sometimes that makes my project a bit crooked but I don’t want it to look like its a perfect cookie cutter project that you can buy at Walmart.
So every project is an original!
Cut 2 long strips with rounded corners. I used 3 shades of pink. The darkest is for behind the flower and cut into the shape of two leaves. The lightest pink is what I put for the middle of the flower. Cut 3/4 of an inch wide by 9 inches long. The centre pink was 1 1/4 inches by 8 inches. If you would like it to be fuller add another inch or two in the length to this piece.
If you are going to add beads to the edges – do it first. Using seed beads add a bead to each stitch as the needle is up on the right side of the felt. Its so easy, we should sew beads onto everything! I added beads to the centre piece and the outside layer but left the middle layer without beads.
To begin putting the flower together. Slide the needle through the felt with a loose baste stitch. Gently pull the thread at the end to begin gathering.
As the final step I put the flower together and sew them in pace. Then attached the entire flower to the sleeve.
Here is the back side. Now I attached the flower to the cup sleeve.
OR
You could put the flower together by sewing the layers directly onto the sleeve. Which ever makes more sense to you.
TA DA! Don’t you just want to show it off.
Felt is so easy to work with it will get your creative juices flowing! Now that you see how easy it is you will be designing more for a friend who loves dogs and another flower one for the babysitter, the mailman, workmates….spreading them all over the kitchen table like me making more….and more….
…or is it just me who does this?
This flower is simply just stacking circles. If you don’t want to sew you could glue it on.
This one is nice for the autumn. I did a few stitches on this seam of this one in green and put a button on as the centre.
The apple coffee cozy would be great for a teacher gift! If the kids did their own hand sewing I think the teacher would love the personal touch of a child’s efforts to stitch it. Ask your kiddos if their teacher likes coffee and put a gift card with it. I read an article about giving teacher gifts and it is the hand written cards of thanks from the child that really touch their hearts.
What about a sweet little bird. I had put some birds just like these on the knees of my daughters pants-to cover a hole. I’ll put the link below.
I hope you get a chance to make a coffee cozy! With felt costing around a dollar a piece you could make 3 from one piece and then personalize it with your scrap pieces. Now that is an inexpensive gift!
Felt is so easy to work with. Get your kids learning some hand sewing skills and give gifts they feel proud to give!
Here are a few more projects that we have tried to make with FELT!
Sew a Super Easy to Make Felt Crown – Add to your dress up clothes!
Make a Fall Table Cloth – From Bandanas
Signs of fall are everywhere. The flowers are scraggly and need to be pulled. Its all very sad to see the colour disappear. So my solution is to buy some bright mums and sew a bandana table cloth for the picnic table (or kitchen table).
I was able to find an amazing collection of bandanas at “a Buck or Two”-its a sort of dollar store where things can cost several dollars. You can also buy bandanas (or search for hankerchief or handkerchief) online. I bought way too many so there will be several more projects to come!
I wanted an autumn theme so I chose greens, beiges, maroon, blue and brown. It might be a good idea to lay out the squares and take a photo if you want a specific layout. As you stack them up they can get a bit shuffled.
They come folded and they are cotton so they really should be washed and dried before sewing to prevent shrinkage and bleeding colours.
You will need:
- 9 bandanas
- sewing machine
- pins
- scissors
Get out the iron! Iron all the bandanas. Or find a kid who likes to iron….tee hee….
Start by pinning the first two bandanas, right sides together. Bandanas seem to have a slightly longer side. Mine were 20×21. Make sure they are all facing the same direction so are the same width. They are often not sewn straight or square. Fortunately, this project is very forgiving.
Hey who ironed this beige one!? Slacker!
Sew along the edge.
Iron the seems flat.
I started by pinning the top sets of 2. (1/2)
Next, I sewed the 3rd square onto the bottom of the pair (2/3).
As you can see, now I have three strips of three bandanas.
Start by pinning the left line to the middle line. Match the centre seem/corners. Sew the strips together.
Finally, line up the middle corners of the last line of squares to pin it to the last line of squares. Sew them in place to complete the tablecloth. Finish by ironing it.
Now your done! If you are detailed oriented you could fold over the edge of the tablecloth and sew a hem. But as you can tell I’m not that sort of gal and the bandanas are all finished so there is no edges to fray. If your squares didn’t line up hemming it could correct a jagged edge. Happily mine matched up this time!
Isn’t this little bird adorable. I got it at Canadian Tire! Never overlook your local hardware store’s garden centre. You never know what you’ll find.
Thank you for reading to the end! Please pin this on Pinterest and follow me on your favorite social media!
Below are a few more of my projects you might want to look at.
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How to turn a Pashmina into an Infinity Scarf
I really, really, really love scarves! Over the last 15 years I have accumulated quite the collection. I’ve dreamt about scarves being on sale and me carrying bags of $5 scarves and pashminas out of the store. Sometimes, I even wear a scarf in the heat of the summer.
This tutorial is how to make an infinity scarf out of a pashmina or regular scarf. I will also give you some details if you are just using new fabric.
You will need:
- an old scarf/pashmina or piece of fabric (20″ or wider x 80″ approx.)
- scissors
- pins
- needle and thread
- sewing machine (optional)
- iron (especially if your scarf has been neglected for a while and crumpled like mine)
Do you like to upcycle?
You can make an infinity scarf out of old clothes, bed sheets, a soft blanket or scarves or new fresh fabric.
Iron and Measure
Start by ironing the creases out of the fabric/scarf.
If you are using new fabric for this project use a piece that measures at least 18 x 70 inches (45cms x 177cms).
My scarf was 26 x 69 inches (66 cms x 175 cms). It was even shorter after I trimmed off the fringe and I think its a great length-finished its 66 inches long. I prefer it to be extra wide too.
Trim off the tassel bit on the end if your scarf/pashmina had trim.
Fold the fabric in half lengthwise with the good side facing inward.
Pin the fabric along the edge of the long side.
Sew the length of the long side.
Pull one end of the tube through to meet the other end and match up the seams. Next, pin the ends together to make the tube into a circle. Be sure to only pin through two layers.
Sew around the top, but don’t sew it closed. Leave a gap of a few inches to pull the scarf through.
After you pull the scarf through that small gap, get your needle and thread and hand sew the gap closed.
Now its ready to wear. Get the dog leash and take your dog out for a walk. Show your gorgeous new scarf upcycle to your neighbourhood!
I really enjoyed reinventing my scarf! Thanks for reading this post, feel free to comment if you need more detail!
Have you seen this post from last winter?! I made a similar scarf but with a zipper pocket to hide your cell phone or passport. Great idea for travelling!
How to Make an Easy Infinity Scarf with Zipper Hidden Pocket
