Rainy Day Felt
Felt patterns for children, gifts, and keepsakes
Update Time!
Hello to all the new faces that will be landing here! I’m still working through a few personal things (trying to buy a house is the BIG one), but I’d like to give an update on the state of things. TL;DR for anyone who wants: Buying a house is taking a painfully long time (so many failed offers!), but I’m still making LOTS of felt stuff. I’m just unable to post much due to space and time constraints with my current living situation. Stay tuned, I’ll be posting more regularly, even if it means it’s not as perfect as I would prefer.
Re-Introduction
My name is Daveanna and I’m a felt artist. I specialize in and absolutely love making felt food. I try to always think of the small details that you might not expect, and create items that make you second-guess whether it’s real or not. Felt is such a fun material to work with; it has a very approachable entry-level, and higher-quality materials are only marginally more expensive once you get the hang of things. I always joke that my mind thinks in felt. I love taking on big challenges, making new and unexpected things, and utilizing a variety of techniques. I want to make my designs accessible to as many people as I can, and that’s why I’m providing them as patterns. I will occasionally sell physical items in my Etsy store, but more regularly will be creating patterns for purchase.
What’s to Come?
Most recently, I’ve been working a on huge project that I can’t wait to share with everyone! It was an absolute dream to work on this, and I don’t think I could have asked for something cooler. My only hint is that it has nothing to do with felt food! 🙂
As for the longer term, ideally, my family will be able to land a deal on a house soon, with a dedicated workspace to produce my art. The housing market has been less-than-friendly to buyers: One home we bid on received 33 offers, which was beyond discouraging. We’ve been looking for almost a year and have lost the bids on countless homes, with less and less appearing on the market. Our family is trying to stay hopeful, but it has been hard. My mobile workshop right now has been a tiny, disorderly basket of materials and a small section of my kid’s play table, cautiously guarding them against any curious hands. All that being said, I am still incredibly inspired and making so many things.
My current project is a set of natural findings such as leaves, seeds, and anything you’d find on the forest floor. I’ve designed a matching game where children can learn to identify which leaves correspond with their respective seeds, berries, cones, etc. This will be released as a pattern set, and the designs are very friendly for first-time felters.
Anywho
You’ll be hearing more from me, hopefully making content in my own studio, if all goes well soon! I appreciate you stopping by. 💚
Painting the Blues Away
After more than a week of horrible air conditions and a sad state for our forests, we’regetting some much needed precipitation in the Pacific Northwest. Whilst indoors and trying to make the best out of a bad situation, I decided to tackle some of my back-burner projects this week. A while back, my mom had hinted at painting some of her resin birdhouses that she had sitting around, and this felt as good a time as any. I was happy to accept her task, but as I gathered my supplies, it dawned on me that I haven’t painted anything in AGES. The last thing I worked on was my Warhammer Vampire Counts army, which speaking of, I really need to get back to! I’m sure it’ll make an appearance here some day.
Happy Coincidence
Given the choice between three very different birdhouses, I selected one that had a barrel-shaped base with a rooftop made of flowers. Initially, I thought I had chosen my color palette at random, but upon reflecting, I realized I practically copied my Animal Crossing: New Horizons town perfectly. Subconscious or not, I am still happy with the colors though.
Coincidence? Ehh, I don’t think so anymore…
I approached this project in a pretty standard way; alternating between painting base coats, washes, and dry-brushing. In an effort to constructively criticize my own work, I see now that I’m loading my brush with too much paint. I’ll need to keep this in mind for when I return to the world of miniatures because it’s so easy to lose details with a heavy-handed brush on a tiny form. Thankfully though, this larger-scale project was kind to me as I glopped on paint, merely hoping for the best. Despite needing to refine my technique, I’m happy with what I’ve done, and more importantly, my mom is too.
But Wait, There’s More!
I breathed a sign of relief, thinking that I had escaped the clutches of my mom’s painting tasks. The next day, a set of four Halloween ornaments were sitting on the table. I’m not exactly sure where they came from, but I understood the message, so I got to work later that night. For these, I stuck to a pretty common palette. I did chose to invert the witch colors from the “norm”, but that just adds to the diversity, which is always a nice thing. I was also pretty pleased with the pumpkin fella’s plaid shirt, thought the lighting didn’t quite capture the distinction between the three colors I used./
Not Quite Done…
As I was putting away my supplies, I glanced over at this little mushroom abode, sitting in a state of half-painted limbo. I realized that if I didn’t show this remaining birdhouse some love, it probably would have remained unfinished indefinitely. I had painted the base coat purple initially, but decided later that the more popular red version would look much better. Also among the pile of scrapped ideas was the notion to make the butterfly a monarch. After painting the very prominent black accents on the wings, it took over the whole piece. As you can see, I’ve modified that choice as well. 🤣
I can’t express how happy I was when my daughter grabbed a paintbrush to help on this project! She gave the flowers a base coat and embellished a few rouge lines of paint here and there. While not everything made it to the end result, I tried to stay true to what she chose for the most part. The big exception was the orange flower, purely because that paint was too thin and giving me a hard time. Yellow prevailed as a result.
A Return to Felt Food
Not long after finishing my unexpected painting projects, I realized that there was a specific void in my crafting life. I had left my poor felt in boxes for far too long, and it was time to remedy that. There’s something so simple, yet gratifying in working with it, and with fall coming, my inspiration feels endless. As promised in the last post, I want to give away my first felt food pattern for free!
I’ve chosen a crop that’s harvested September through October, which is befitting of this time of year. It’s the star of holiday dishes, baby food, and healthy diets; I bring to you: The Sweet Potato. This pattern is pretty straightforward and can easily be adapted to suit your needs. In fact, I highly encourage you to do so, creating much more realistic-looking felt food. When making multiples, I also try my best to subtly alter the shapes so they closer resemble what you would find in the real world.
There’s no two things in nature that are completely identical, and those differences define the true beauty of life!
Now that you’ve got a fun project in front of you, I’m going to head out! Take care of yourselves out there, and let me know if you make some sweet potatoes for your loved ones. Please use the hashtag #rainydayfelted or tag @rainydayfelt on Twitter or Instagram if you make these so that I can appreciate your work on social media!
❤ Daveanna
Logo Design, but with Felt!
Just for fun, I thought you might like to see some layers to the process of creating my logo! I’ll start by saying that logo design is not my expertise, but I do think that I’ve landed on something that I like. It’s simple, translates well to all the social media icons, and generally does what I need it to do.
Deciding on a Logo
The first step was easily the most time-consuming: Brainstorming a logo out of thin air. I knew I wanted to incorporate rain in the design, that was a given. My earliest design actually was just a rain cloud with long raindrops, and the logo underneath. I liked it (and would have definitely reshaped the cloud) but decided it just didn’t convey the easy-to-read impact that I wanted to have.
That took me down the path that eventually led to the final design. Understanding how I was planning to use my logo was the most important (and probably obvious) step. Some of the items I intend on making in the future will include original packaging. Because of this, I wanted a way to incorporate the logo in a fun, non-intrusive, and more decorative way. I decided to use the raindrop as a focal point and went from there, ultimately leading to where I am now.
Felt Time!
Now, I wasn’t entirely sure if I was going to post this process or not, so I admittedly didn’t take pictures from the start. To catch you up to where I’m at below: I printed the outline onto printer paper and cut out the different elements (while regretting not using the Cricut because I thought it would be “too much effort”), chose my felt colors and cut out the shapes accordingly, and pinned the raindrops onto the background color.
See? You didn’t miss much. Here I’ve pinned back the parts of the design that weren’t actively being sewn to have less bulk in-hand. This made stitching the edges in the center so much easier. I used a blanket stitch around all the components to secure them in place, then a decorative top stitch to outline everything in matching colors.
Lettering
For the next step, I reluctantly buckled and pull out The Cricut. This was purely because I didn’t want to waste felt by accidentally snipping a part of the letter off. Unfortunately for me, I unknowingly used an excessively dull needle, and the best result I got was a mere outline of the cuts. I’m honestly fortunate that it didn’t ruin the felt despite it all, because I didn’t have a backup piece. Now slightly frustrated, I had to cut out the letters by hand, which was I was hoping to avoid. As a result, I did sadly snip a few corners off, but I had a plan to fix them later.
Alternating between aligning the letters to the paper template and sewing them in place, I finished this step slowly but surely. Now was time to address my “cutting mistake”. I took a felting needle and some leftover scraps of dark blue felt to fill in the missing portions.
Finishing Touches
As an afterthought, I chose to outline the raindrops in a shiny silver thread because I wanted to make them stand out. Next, I took a 12″ round piece of wood and drilled a small hole in the back for mounting. I trimmed any overlapping edges of the design to make for a perfect fit. Now it was time to glue it in place! I went with my staple Tacky Glue to get the job done. If you plan on doing a project like this for yourself, remember not to go overboard with the glue, otherwise it will start seeping through your felt! Take a small paper towel or paint brush to apply the glue in a thin, even layer to prevent this from happening.
Time for the home stretch: sewing on the border edge. No pattern required, I just cut strips of felt in corresponding colors that were the thickness of the board. The strips were glued in place and let dry for a while before starting to sew. I did this so I would be able to pull the thread tight for a clean seam without causing the felt to move.
Voila! Here’s the result of my efforts:
So I was done now, right?
Sadly no. You see, I’m a creative perfectionist, and I stared at the design in disappointment, realizing that I didn’t make it exactly as I intended. This of course bothered me. I took pictures of the project, transferred them to Photoshop, and started manipulating the design to look more like the original.
I have both a love/hate relationship with what I’ve produced. While it now looks more like my initial logo design, it looks (much) less like it was made by hand in felt. It just looks like it’s made of felt now. Which, could be better or worse, depending on how you look at it. Either way, I decided for most uses, to nix the text for easier viewing on devices. Additionally, I had wanted to showcase the felt in the logo, but after processing it in different ways on the web, I chose to make it more subtle. I wound up with a hybrid version of my original digital design, married with the one made it felt, so at least it wasn’t all in vain. Maybe only a little bit. 🙃
Ahhh, gotta love the creative process.
So there you have it. A glimpse of my scattered creative process! I hope you’ve enjoyed the read this time around. Stay tuned for my next post, it will be my first felt food item, and I want to give it away free to test how the download link and process goes.
I’ll see you soon!
❤ Daveanna
Felt Food on My Mind
I’d like to start by thanking you for stopping by. I’m serious. Thank you for taking the time to view any amount of content in this tiny little corner of the internet. I hope to fill it with all the felt food that I can possibly create!
I’ve made this website to showcase my love of felt food, create content that spreads joy, and make a living doing what makes me happy. This world needs more positivity, and if I can achieve even a little smile, it will all be worthwhile.
A Little Background
I have been juggling with the concept of this business for years. Some days it feels like it will never happen, but I just keep trying to push forward and hold myself accountable to my goals. I’ve got the logo made, the website structure decided, and the final pieces of this puzzle laying into place. I can’t wait to start blogging, posting projects, and talking with the wonderful community that’s out there! I’d like to share at least one project a week, and once I settle into my groove, hopefully more. However, I’ve come to know myself better in recent times, and want to recognize realistic goals. In conclusion, I don’t want to over-promise and fall short, so let’s see where things go for now.
Website Structure
In general, I plan to make felt food that’s relevant to the current seasons and holidays at the time of posting. I will be breaking down new entries into categories including type, size, complexity, and cost (free vs. premium). All new patterns will be started as a blog entry. This will allow me to chat about the process, give you insight into why I chose it, and anything else I’d like to talk about at that time. I will include links that take you to the project page and/or store to purchase the pattern directly. In addition to my internal website store, I’ll include a link to my Etsy shop if you’re more comfortable there.
I also plan to arrange affiliate links and ads on the project pages as a passive way to support this business. Affiliate links can be clicked to take you to familiar sites to purchase materials used in a project. If you make a purchase through one of those re-directs, I may receive a small commission at no cost to you. As if I didn’t offer enough options, I’ll also be setting up a Patreon soon too. If you have any thoughts or suggestions for tiers and rewards, please let me know!
Please keep in mind, this is a work in progress. Any constructive feedback at this point is more than welcome! You’re welcome to leave a comment below or navigate to the Contact page for a zillion other ways to get in touch.
The Takeaway
As you can probably tell, I’m in love with felt food and the process of making it. My main focus at Rainy Day Felt will be to produce quality patterns on a regular basis that you can purchase in my store. Provided that things go well, I plan to tackle other projects with felt, later down the road. It just depends on who finds their way here and what we end up doing, so please don’t be shy! I aspire to carve out a nice little space where we can collectively make things and be inspired by one another.
Lastly, if you make anything with the patterns I’ve created, I would absolutely love to see your work! We can all use the hashtag #rainydayfelted to share on social media. I’ve signed up for as many platforms as I think I can handle, so hopefully you’re part of one (or all) of them!
I can’t wait to hear from you!
❤ Daveanna
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