Sixth Street Sundries

Emily Midgett

alice's gingerbread lane

Holiday Fun With Felt: Day 4- Gingerbread!

Hi friends! I have some more felt projects to share with you today, featuring the sweetest little gingerbread houses around! My first three projects were created using dies intended for stitching, with convenient little holes punched through to make the stitching process as quick and simple as can be. But, I have been collecting a variety of dies over the last 18 months~ that work beautifully for felt projects. All you need to turn a papercrafting die into a felting die is a little felt, some felt glue, and some imagination! I love a good gingerbread house filled with exquisite details, and luckily for me, gingerbread houses are super trendy right now, so these projects will fit right in to both modern and classic decor. Let’s get started with the details on my projects!

*I have gathered links to all of the products used at the bottom of the post for your convenience, using affiliate links at no extra cost to you. Thank you for shopping with my links! I truly appreciate your support for my work!*

This first project is a little bit simpler, with the majority of the work being done by the sweet chateau from Honey Bee Stamp’s Alice’s Gingerbread Lane. I die cut each of the pieces for the chateau from felt from Benzie Design and Poshta, including a gingery brown, petal pink, white glitter, and shining metallic felts in copper and red. I find that, when using smaller, more intricate dies like those of the windows and other accents, using 100% wool felt achieves good results, and metallic or coated 100% wool felt achieving the best results, as they hold their shape when die cut with minimal fraying. When working with larger die images, however, the felt blends work very nicely! I adhered all of the components with felt glue, using the fine end of a die poker tool to add glue to the delicate lines of the windows and doors.

Once I had adhered all of the felt components to the gingerbread house, I added it to my oval embroidery hoop, which is about 4.5″ x 6″ and filled with a minty green fabric from my stash. These small embroidery hoop projects are a great way to use up fabric remnants that are frequently in the clearance bin! I also have thrifted old cloth napkins, tablecloths, and handkerchiefs to use in my embroidery hoops. Once all of the felt glue had dried, I added lots of sparkling seed bead and bugle bead embellishments for snow, Christmas lights, and the pathway, stitching them individually using coordinating embroidery floss. I also added a few glass gems to my bunting and stitched a few freehand snowflakes. The final touch was a silky ribbon loop for hanging and a brown velvet bow!

My second project is a bit larger in scale, featuring the Yuletide Lane die set from Concord and 9th! This die set is intended to create a shaped accordion style card, but I decided to modify it a bit to create this detailed gingerbread house hoop. I thought that the simple and clean images would work perfectly with felt!

Before beginning my project, I selected a beautifully festive tartan fabric from my stash and filled an 8″ round embroidery hoop with it. I then selected coordinating felt shades, with a gingery brown for my house, metallic red for the door, white glitter for the snow, and three different shades of green for the greenery. I die cut the individual pieces for the house and adhered them with felt glue, again using the fine tipped end of my die cut release tool to precisely place the glue on the more delicate pieces. I arranged the assembled felt die cuts on my plaid embroidery hoop and adhered them with more felt glue.

After I had finished adhering the felt pieces to the hoop, it was time to begin embellishing with beads and other bits of sparkle! I die cut gold metallic bells and green wreaths, added different types of ribbon and trim, metallic thread bows, snowflakes, and lots of individual bugle and seed beads. I made sure when adhering my felt pieces to the hoop to use small drops of glue around the edges of the images so that my beading needle could easily pierce through the felt and fabric, making it easy to add these shimmering embellishments! I just adore how colorful and yet still elegant this project is, not to mention incredibly festive. It fits perfectly with that “Ralph Lauren Christmas” theme that I’ve seen going around social media!

Well, that’s all for my projects today! I wish that I could spend the next several weeks letting out my creative energy in felt form, because these hoops and ornament projects are just so much fun. If you haven’t looked through your standalone dies yet to see if they will work with your felting projects, I highly encourage you to do so! It’s a great way to get double duty out of your papercrafting stash! Thanks so much for stopping by today, and have a marvelous day!

Fun with Felt: Traditional Holiday Imagery Using New Honey Bee Stamps Dies!

Hi friends! My dear friends over at Honey Bee Stamps very kindly sent me some of their exquisite new holiday products from the Cozy Christmas release with which to play, and I went a little nutty creating some felt home decor and ornaments. Working with anything sewing-related has always been incredibly intimidating to me, but I recently discovered that you can use felt and felt glue in almost exactly the same way that you can use paper and regular glue! It seriously has opened up a whole new world (and new shopping opportunities) for me! I learned a few (very simple) stitches to add some bead and sequins adornments, and dug out my hot glue gun and ribbons to create some lovely gifts to accompany our annual cookie boxes for friends and family. I wanted to share them here to hopefully inspire you to try something new, even if it is a bit intimidating! Let’s get started with the details on this first round of projects (because, like I said earlier, I went a bit nutty!).

*I have gathered links to all of the products used at the bottom of the post for your convenience, using affiliate links. Thank you for shopping with my links! I truly appreciate your support for my work!*

The absolutely darling Alice’s Gingerbread Lane dies were up first; I couldn’t resist creating some adorable embroidery hoop ornaments and home decor pieces with these exquisitely detailed dies! The die set contains a ton of different pieces for each house, but with the handy color guide included with each die set and the debossed details on the die cuts themselves, each of these houses are super simple to assemble. I have been acquiring felt in lots of different shades lately, but thought that it would be best to be as traditional as possible with these little houses, sticking to that cinnamon brown for the gingerbread itself with lots of white, red, and green, with a few touches of baby pink!

After I had loaded up my 4″ embroidery hoop with some textured linen material in a natural white color, I used felt glue to adhere the felt die cuts to their appropriate spot. For the super delicate pieces, I did find it easier to place a blob of glue on a piece of scrap paper and use the super fine tip on the die release tool to “paint” the glue on to these super thin pieces, like the windows. I added some stitched details to the door and the roof of the gingerbread house, then used seed beads to add some extra little details and lovely texture to the house and tree, as well as some clear glass snowflakes to the background. I used some gorgeous red ribbon from Vivant to add a loop to create my ornament as well as a bright red bow, which I adhered with my trusty hot glue gun. I am absolutely in love with how this one turned out!

My second house is on a larger 6″ hoop to accommodate the height on the gingerbread house from the Alice’s Gingerbread Lane dies. I again die cut each of the layers from different colors of felt, this time adding in some metallic bronze felt for the eaves and base of the house and some metallic red felt for the garland on the tree. I adhered all of the pieces together with the same felt glue and added the finished pieces to my embroidery hoop with felt glue. To add the beads and stitched stars/snowflakes, I used some gorgeous metallic red embroidery thread. While most of my felt pieces were made to be given away for Christmas gifts, I definitely decided to keep this one for myself to put on my own mantle! It’s so cute!

My next projects featured some ornaments a bit simpler in design using some new and one older die sets. I always make a huge variety of cookies to give out to friends and family in tins, and this year I wanted to include a little something handmade. These dies were perfect for creating a little handmade gift to decorate the top of the tins and, hopefully, our loved ones’ Christmas trees!!

After placing some adorable polka dotted fabric in my 3″ embroidery hoop, I used felt in traditional taupe and cream to create the horse from the adorable Lovely Layers: Old Fashioned Rocking Horse, adding some light blue and red accents for a bit of color. I used some embroidery floss and a satin stitch over the top of the reins, bridle, and saddle to make them a bit neater and secure them down more permanently. I have found that the teeny felt die cuts fray a bit more easily, but you can make them a bit more sturdy with some glue or by adding stitching over the top.

For my next project, I used the tree from the Lovely Layers: Christmas Cookies die set with some green felt and lots of seed beads and sequins to create this festive and sparkling Christmas tree. So much sparkle and detail on this one!

Finally, I created another 4″ ornament with the accents from Lovely Layers: Candy Cane, an older die set that features not only a beautifully detailed layered candy cane image, but also some gorgeous foliage, berries, and a fluffy bow. I cut the foliage from two different shades of green, adhering them with dabs of felt glue; I again used the tip of my die release tool to “paint” the delicate pine sprigs with glue to securely adhere them to my textured linen fabric. I added the fluffy bow to my foliage arrangement, cut from some more metallic red felt, finally adding some stitched details to the holly leaves and some sequins and beads. I finished this one off with another loop of ribbon for the hanger and a fluffy bow at the top!

Well, that’s all for my projects today. I have a few more blog posts planned using these marvelous new dies, so stay tuned! A whole new stitching world has been opened to me, along with a new artistic medium to learn in my spare time. Thanks so much for stopping by today, and have a marvelous day!