County Fair Handcrafts

We went to the LA County Fair a couple weeks back and they had the greatest little area called Heritage Square or Heritage something-a-ruther and it was full of handcrafts for the kids. We discovered enough handcrafts there to last the kids through the winter!

Here's a little rag doll made from strips of left over fabric.



It is made similar to this Nettie Doll, except on the one we made, we didn't use separate strips for the arms and floss them on, instead, once we tied off the head, we pulled out the arms from the existing strips of fabric and braided them as arms while we left the remaining fabric strips for the body and legs. I think it's simpler that way.

My daughter made several of these that night with different colored fabric we had laying around and has had them laying in her bed since.

This was adorable and so simple to make, yet time consuming enough to be a quality handcraft project and a labor of love; it's a rug made from left over fabric pieces tied in knots on to a rug Canvas. Messy, yes, but it looked so great when it was put together. We got rug canvas at Joanne's and plan on working on one this winter.



This is also a very simple project I knew nothing about. Needle Felting. I'm not sure now what the fiber is that we got, but it's some type of wool or felt and it came in a pack like this:



And you can make things like this:



I helped my son make the unfinished rhino on the left and my daughter made the camel on the right.

Here are some of the adorable creations they had on display:





The way it works is you take some of the fabric and roll it into the kind of shape you want and then you place it on the sponge and poke it with this needle:



If you look closely, you'll see the angled notches in the needle which the fibers snag on every time you poke it and as the felt fibers get pulled through the rest of the felt, it adheres to itself, forming a sturdier shape. So the idea is to poke, poke, poke a lot of times around to create the shape you want, then you can add colored bits here and there depending on what you want to make. It's very open to any kind of creativity really.

Just Googling "needle felting" images brings up a wealth of ideas.

So there you are! Enjoy!!