Be Grateful For

 November is when here in the States we celebrate Thanksgiving.  It is a day developed to be thankful for the harvest and the good growing season.  It has become a day of wonderful food, family and friends, parades and football.  November also has become a month where people put on their social media the items in their life they are grateful for.

I have mentioned before in this blog that I teach at a local college.  For many years I gave an assignment called the Gratitude Inventory (I still use it occasionally when someone needs some extra credit).  The assignment was to “Make a list of 20 things for which you are grateful.  Think about your family, friends, and talents as topics of gratitude.  Look at your life.  Respond to something in the news or the course content that you are grateful happened or didn’t happen to you.  Gratitude does not have to be something dramatic and life changing.  You might just be grateful that it is Friday.” 

It was a great assignment and often the students would comment that they would continue   doing Gratitude Inventories because it reminded them of the good they had in their lives.  What would you put on the list if you had this assignment?

I decided today to give me this assignment.  So here is my Gratitude Inventory:

 

1- My health

2- My brothers

3- My parents

4- My nephew

5- A heater when it is cold

6- Air Conditioning when it is hot

7- My friends

8- My fish

9- My fingers

10- My eyesight

11- My hearing

12- My tastebuds

13- My job

14- My home

15- My embroidery ability

16- My needle felting

17- My spool knitting

18- My etsy shop Heartfully Cheryl

19- My blog Heartfully Cheryl

20- That it is Friday.

 

 

© 2018, 2021 Cheryl Fillion

 

Using Hands in Kid’s Crafts

 I  have been trying to think of a Thanksgiving craft to do this year when I remembered this blog post and thought for the holiday it would be fun to repost this.

Do you remember making a hand print turkey in grade school?  Have you of creating other things using a hand print.  I’m seeing a lot of crafts with hand prints.

My favorite is the turkey. I liked as a child using my hand as part of the design. It made my turkey more personal.  Although then I probably thought it was just fun and silly.

If you place your hand print with the fingers upward, you can make all kinds of birds.  Another good one for the hand print is a peacock.   The fingers are great as the feathers and the thumb can be the head with the palm as the body.

If you place your hand print with the fingers downward, the fingers can be the legs of some four legged animals with the thumb either as the head or the tail or as in an elephant the trunk.  

If you close your fingers a bit, the hand can be a fish or with some additions, a rocket.

                          

Go ahead ad trace your child’s hand (or yours if you want to have some childhood fun) on paper and see what the child can come up with. 

©2017, 2020 Cheryl Fillion

I Love Pumpkins

I saw pumpkins at the grocery this week and couldn’t resist reposting the blog.  I can’t help it.  I love pumpkins.

 

I think my favorite fall icon/symbol/item is the pumpkin.  My Thanksgiving table always has a pumpkin pie.  I roast the pumpkin seeds from my Jack O’Lanterns.  And even though there are no children in my household, Halloween wouldn’t be Halloween without a carved pumpkin.

 

 

                                 

 

 

And of course I make lots of pumpkin quilts, coasters, needle felted ones.  If it has a pumpkin on it, I am probably going to try and make it.

 

Last year I had a blog post entitled Spool Knitted Pumpkin  which showed how to make a spool knitted pumpkin coaster.  Check it out if you like to spool knit.  And I bet crocheters could figure out how to make something similar.

 

 

 

 

I have also used pumpkins with the kids crafts I do at the farmers market.  I traced a pumpkin cookie cutter onto card stock and let the kids decorate it with orange pompoms.  (Check out the blog post: Cookie Cutters Aren’t Just For Cookies )    

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lately I have been making needle felted pumpkins.  Using cookie cutters as a form, I have made some ornaments for Halloween and Thanksgiving. How to do this is in the blog post Needle Felting in a Cookie Cutter   Just switch out a pumpkin cookie cutter for the bunny. 

 

 

I haven't even mentioned pumpkin pies or pumpkin bread or pumpkin soup.  What can I say I LOVE pumpkins.

© 2017,  2020 Cheryl Fillion

 

Traditions

Traditions are important.  They give you a sense of continuity.  You have a memory of something done in the past and an experience to look forward to in the future. They can give a sense of comfort and in many cases bring family and friends together. And they can give you time to reflect on what is important to you and others. And at this time of year, traditions seem especially meaningful.

Everyone has traditions where holidays are concerned.  I always have turkey and pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving. I watch the Macy’s Parade and the movie Holiday Inn with Bing Crosby.  To me the holiday wouldn’t be the same without those items.  At Christmas I decorate my house, even though I rarely have visitors.  I do it for me (or maybe I should say I overdo it for me).  There are certain movies I watch during the season and I usually have an Advent calendar to open up each day.  It gives the holiday more meaning to me and connects me to Christmas of the past and family who are no longer with me.

A lot of holiday traditions involve creativity.  Decorating the tree.  Making holiday cookies and candy.  Creating gifts for loved ones (I always remember the pajamas my grandmother used to make for my brothers, cousins and myself.)   Every year since I was a teenager I have made an ornament to give family and friends.  It was something I looked forward to and something others enjoy receiving.  Only one year did I skip the ornament making.  It was the year my mother died and that Christmas was difficult.  I didn’t think I would enjoy making the ornament knowing my mother wouldn’t receive one.  I regret not doing that now. I think it might have helped me with some continuity in a holiday that had changed so much without my mother.   

Many families have traditions that involve creativity.  I bet lots of you make Christmas cookies and candy each year.  You probably look forward to it and do it as a group. It gives you a chance to spend time with loved ones (especially if there are grandchildren involved) and share part of yourself as you serve the cookies at dinner or holiday parties.

You might have some holiday performance you attend.  For the past 3 years I have gone to the local performance of the Nutcracker that our Junior College puts on.  I look forward to it and make an evening out of it with a dinner to a favorite restaurant.  You might attend a church concert or even a city Christmas parade or a school pageant where your child or grandchild is performing. 

Traditions of any kind can be important to a person or a family.  They may bring you together once a year and allow you to connect with what is important.  And even if the tradition is just yours and you don’t share it with others, it gives you a chance to do something special and meaningful.  I usually go alone to the Nutcracker but it is something I end up sharing with others when I talk about it.  I feel good supporting the ballet in our area and showing all the young dancers how much I appreciate their work with my attendance and applause.  

Traditions have a way of creating memories every time you participate.  Think of all the memories you have as a child or of your children having a picture taken with Santa Claus or of going out to pick a Christmas tree or going caroling in your neighborhood.

And being able to participate in the same thing year after year gives a little predictability to our lives in this very unpredictable world.

Make sure you create some traditions for your holidays or for your every days as well.  It will show you and others what is important in your life and give you a chance to celebrate those special days.

©2019 Cheryl E. Fillion

Be Grateful For…

November is when here in the States we celebrate Thanksgiving.  It is a day developed to be thankful for the harvest and the good growing season.  It has become a day of wonderful food, family and friends, parades and football.  November also has become a month where people put on their social media the items in their life they are grateful for.

I have mentioned before in this blog that I teach at a local college.  For many years I gave an assignment called the Gratitude Inventory (I still use it occasionally when someone needs some extra credit).  The assignment was to “Make a list of 20 things for which you are grateful.  Think about your family, friends, and talents as topics of gratitude.  Look at your life.  Respond to something in the news or the course content that you are grateful happened or didn’t happen to you.  Gratitude does not have to be something dramatic and life changing.  You might just be grateful that it is Friday.”

It was a great assignment and often the students would comment that they would continue   doing Gratitude Inventories because it reminded them of the good they had in their lives.  What would you put on the list if you had this assignment?

I decided today to give me this assignment.  So here is my Gratitude Inventory:

1- My health

2- My brothers

3- My parents

4- My home

5- A heater when it is cold

6- Air Conditioning when it is hot

7- My friends

8- My fish

9- My fingers

10- My eyesight

11- My hearing

12- My tastebuds

13- My job

14- Clean water

15- My embroidery ability

16- My needle felting

17- My spool knitting

18- My Etsy shop Heartfully Cheryl

19- My blog Heartfully Cheryl

20- That it is Friday.

© 2018 Cheryl Fillion

 

Cookie Cutters Aren’t Just For Cookies

I wrote this last year and just love the idea of using cookie cutters for crafts; I had to post it again.

 

Cookie cutters used to be for Christmas but now there are cutters for every holiday or occasion you can imagine.  But you know you can use cookie cutters for more than just cookies.  They are great shapes for kids crafts, appliqué, needle felting, punch needle and embroidery.

Pompom pumpkin


I use pumpkin, bell and stars for kid’s crafts at the market.  I trace the cookie cutter on to paper, scan them on my printer so I can enlarge them to the size I need (although I have pumpkin cutters in just the size I needed).   I print them out on cardstock, cut them out and punch a hole in the top then add yarn for a hanger.  Give them to the kids to glue whatever they want on it or just color them.  I was given pompoms of various colors so we have been using those. 

Cat Pumpkin

Witch Pumpkin

                                

I have also used them for appliqué.  Again just trace the cookie cutter; cut it out on fabric and sew it down.  I like the cat and witch cutters my mom had as we were growing up.  They were great appliqués for my Halloween quilt (which one of these years I will finish).

Punchneedle

I enjoy punchneedle embroidery.  Recently I found some tie-dyed embroidery floss and wanted to see how it would look stitched out.  So I took several sizes of my heart shaped cookie cutters and made myself a little heart ornament using the floss.

 

Needlefelted

Cookie cutters are also a great shape for needle felting.  As long as the cutter is open on both ends, you can place your roving in the cutter and needle felt until the roving takes the shape of the cutter.  Then once you have finished felting it, you can use it as an appliqué, stick a thread hanger through it for an ornament or glue a magnet on the back and put it on your refrigerator. 

Making sugar cookies are so much fun and decorating them with children creates memories but using your cutter with fabric and thread (or glue and pompoms) is a way to keep the cookies forever.  Cookie cutters aren’t just for cookies anymore.

 

© 2016, 2017 Cheryl Fillion

A Needle Felted Pumpkin

As I mentioned in last week’s blog I love pumpkins: real pumpkins, fabric pumpkins, yarn pumpkins.  Lately I have been doing needle felted pumpkins.  They are easy, fun and make great hostess gifts if you are invited somewhere for Thanksgiving.

When I am doing a 3 dimensional item, I will use a ‘core’ batting to form the shape of the item and then add the colored roving or batting on the outside.  Core batting can be a cleaned undyed wool or even a polyester batting (just like you would use to stuff a pillow) .  You don’t want to us your colorful batting or roving on the inside of the figure where it can’t be seen. 

core batting

Once you have the core batting, start felting it into the shape you want.  If you use a polyester batting you may have to use more than the wool batting and may have to felt longer to get the shape you want.  That’s OK because in most cases the polyester batting is cheaper.

Core batting in its shape

When you have the size and shape you want for your pumpkin, start felting in the colored batting.  The batting I am using in the picture is called a sculptured batting so it has bumps and nobs of wool that wasn’t combed smooth.  I like the look of it for the pumpkin.  Not all pumpkins are smooth in its shell.  Keep adding the colored roving or batting until your core sculpture is covered.

roving on core batting shape

Covered core shape

    

Once you have your shaped covered with the colored batting, pick one side and over felt it.  That means keep needle felting the area until it is flat so you have a base to set it on. You don’t want your pumpkin rolling around.

Needle felt flat base

One the opposite side of that base, needle felt a small indentation.  This will be where your stem will go.

Create area for stem

 Now take some green batting; you don’t need much and started felting a stem . I usually try to make it a tiny cigar shape.  Use whatever colored green you would like as your stem.  I like the look of a dark green although an olive green would look just as nice.

Felting the stem

 Once you have the size and shape of your stem, needle felt it into the pumpkin.  Place the stem in the indentation and felt through the stem at the base and into the pumpkin.  Make sure you put your needle all the way through to the pumpkin or the stem won’t attach.  

Pumpkin with stem

     

Now most pumpkins have indentations along the outside.  To create those, start needling in a line from the stem to the base and keep needling until you see the indentation form.  Do the same thing all around the pumpkin. I usually felt so there are eight indentations.  But you do what you would like (including no indentations.)

Felting indentations

  Happy Pumpkin Season, everyone.

©2017  Cheryl Fillion