Another gift for W completed.

Okay, it seems I am off and running with this Christmas in July thing again this year.  Only 5 months left till Christmas and 4 months left till W's birthday.  I am starting to feel a little panicked over the whole thing, but that leads to progress right?  

Some of you may remember W's birthday sweater from last year.  Well, building on that idea, this year I decided to use the same technique to make a needle felted vest.  This turned out to essentially be a free project.  I used leftover yarn and roving and a wool thrift shop sweater that I purchased a long time ago for a different purpose.

I had felted this sweater a long time ago before we moved, thinking I was going to make it into a purse, and make W some wool pants out of the sleeves, but that never happened, so this week, I decided to make it into a cute little toadstool vest to give to him either for his birthday or Christmas.  (Because they are so close together, my plan is to make a few things and then sort out when I will give them to him later on).

In any case, The sweater had been a turtle neck and I was able to cut it up the middle and press the neck down to make a cute little collar.  I used wool yarn to blanket stitch around the edges.  The pockets were cut out of the sleeves that I went ahead and felted.  (I have plans for the left over bits of these too).  Somehow, hanging up in the picture they look a little wonky but i don't think they look that bad in real life.  If I decide they do, I'll have to remove them and re-stitch them on.  

In any case I very firmly needle-felted the toadstools onto the back and the pockets (before I attached them) and then sprayed them with water and used a hot steamy iron on both sides of the fabric to help set the design.

I need to get some more wool sweaters from some local thrift stores and try to make W  a few more of these jackets/vests.