Wednesday, November 17, 2010

The Wednesday Review- Fanciful Felties



I wasn't sure what to expect with this book. Sometimes when ordering more edgy (for lack of a better word) books on craft you can end up with something terminally hip, so much so as to be useless. 


I like this book. While I'm not apt to use the faces, the general form and ideas are pretty darn swell. Plus, the patterns are FULL SIZE.  I may end up reducing some of them, but I cannot tell you what a joy it is to not have many tiny patterns with "enlarge 200%" on them. That bugs me to no end. In my view, I bought your book now the least you can do is give me REAL patterns.






There are 14 projects in the book and all are very beginner friendly. The instructions are very clear and concise. In non traditional craft books this can be a sticky wicket. The place to impress upon your gentle reader how unique you are is not in the instructions. 


Be casual, be chatty but please, please be concise. 


I'm in love with the houses and it tickled me that she includes different door and window variations.  The majority of the figures are made by attaching the head to the front of the body and then sewing the two body/head pieces together.  This is a method I use whenever possible as sewing the head to the body is one of my least (and most unsuccessful) trials of plush making. 


There is also, for reasons that escape me, a good scone recipe in the back of the book. Not expected, but I'm always up for a good scone recipe. 


I also appreciate that these patterns can be adapted to cottons and other fabrics. Good wool felt is expensive and while I'd love to have heaps of it at my disposal, fact is, it's damn pricey. I'm not sure a quilting cotton weight would suffice, but home decor remnants, something with a bit of substance will stand in nicely. 


All in all, it's a good buy, (I got mine for about $13 from Amazon Fanciful Felties) with some great jumping off projects. Sometimes even those of us who do this for a living need to look at our craft another way. I already have plans for an entire little village...

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