FELTY BUZZY INSECTS
Starting from an oval felt shape you can create a variety of different insects that you can use to create phonestraps or bookmarks or just to put on a shelf.
Here is the tutorial to create a bee, but you can easily change some steps to make other insects like a cricket.
THE BEE
What you need: an orange or yellow oval, two black felt stripes, some light blue cotton twine, two pieces of black twine, orange and black embroidery floss.
Take the orange oval shape and stitch one black stripe to it. Before stitching the second stripe you need to make the wings.
The wings:
Take the light blue cotton twine and bend it like in the first picture. Bind both ends together using thread and needle (stitch through the twine).
Take the second black stripe and make a little cut in the middle. Insert the twine ends through this little opening, as you see in the picture above. Make sure the twine remains hidden under the stripe and sew twine and felt together.
Now you can stitch also the second stripe + wings to the orange oval, making sure that the twine lies in the middle.
Once you've sewn the second stripe, make the needle come out of felt between the two wings as in the picture below and fix the "horizontal" twine. This is meant to determine the shape of the wings.
The antennas and the eyes:
To create the antennas I used some black twine: you need two pieces (about 3 cm). Make a little knot at one end of each piece.
To insert the antenna through the felt you need a needle: move it back and forth to create a little hole in the felt through which you will insert the antenna (the end without the knot of course!). Now stitch the antenna to the inside part of the orange felt.
To create the eyes all you need is some embroidery floss and two small circles of white thin felt.
Make sure that eyes and antennas both lie symmetrically.
Magic trick!:
You're just one trick away from a buzzy bee: fold the orange oval in two and stitch both sides together starting from the back part of the body.
When you get to the head, fill the bee with a little stuffing, to make it nicely fatter.
To give the bee a sort of mouth, don't sew all the way to the end but leave a little opening (about 6-7 mm) at the head side.
So this is your cute buzzy bee:
THE CRICKET:
To create a cricket you can follow the same key steps as regards body and antennas. Just stitch a pair of hopping cricket legs!
