It’s been a very busy four weeks. The late summer days seemed to quickly disappear as the cooler (finally!) autumn weather begins to arrive. I love this time of year – cooler days, even cooler evenings, sunshine, colorful trees, the harvest from the garden(or farmer’s market), visiting the apple orchard, and falling leaves. This year, I think it was even more welcome than usual since the summer was so hot, it was hard to enjoy any time outdoors. Often, ‘autumn’ is used as a synonym for a stage of life: we hear the expression that someone is in the autumn of their life. Four weeks ago, I learned that a dear friend of mine, is not only in the ‘autumn of her life,’ but was preparing herself for her final journey as she asked me for my assistance in certain preparations. In return, I have decided that her final gift to me is the realization that every day is to be treasured. Perhaps this will explain why I temporarily ‘put aside’ my blog to spend time with her. Despite the fact that I was not able to find time to create a single pin in the last two weeks, I still have pins and felted toppers galore bouncing around in my head. The ones featured here were made earlier in the month…

I continue to ‘experiment’ with each new pin – trying some variation of design, fabric/wool, trims, techniques, beads, etc. I am taking mental notes on what works well and what might not be so great. I’m ‘big’ on having a nicely finished pin/product with no threads or knots showing anywhere; and I like to know that such a pin will withstand it’s usage in good shape. By early next year, I hope to use my experience to create some pin patterns.

The photos above show the results of my fusing various fabrics to the wool felt. The fusing takes a good hot iron, but works well enough, and I think the addition of the fabric just extends the color options beyond the felt colors. In the case of the yellow pinwheel, the fabric choices are more or less dominate design – stripes and dots! (By the way, in order to figure this one out, I had to almost take apart the pinwheel I have kept on hand for my granddaughter!!) If you look at the pink flower, you’ll notice that the center button has beads spot stitched on it – can you believe that I actually found a button with little holes all over it?!?!

Have you ever planned to do one thing and find that you somehow end up with something totally different? Well, this is how I ended up with the pink rose ‘corsage’ pin in the photo below! I had a whole different idea in mind, but when the way I cut the felt out wasn’t ‘cooperating’ with me, things just took their own course! This pin has wire in the leaves so you can shape them. A good deal of pinning and steaming was used to shape the ‘petals’ – and so far they are holding their shape well.

Considering that my first series of topper patterns were all based on folded snowflakes, I figured I needed to try a snowflake pin. I love the soft beautiful blue color of the felt and it was begging for the sparkle that was added with the Swarovski crystals. I did not use the hot fix type of crystals, but used a jeweler’s glue to adhere them to the felt in a manner that I think will keep them from coming off! I can see more of these in wonderful holiday and winter colors!!

In my next blog I will posting 4 more pin photos. Believe it or not, I am not JUST working on pins! I do have design plans for and am working out a few more toppers and table runners. But those pins are just the right thing to work on when you need a smaller project and/or have less time.