Love

The Bible said it, the Beatles said it, and now, Anna Sui says it. Love really is all you need. 

The new Blythe a Day group for September starts today (of course, because it's September 1st)--but, the list of themes is usually posted a week or more before the new month starts, so everyone has time to think about it and start on the first couple of pictures...this month however, the list wasn't posted until this morning, so I had to get BUSY if I wanted to participate. Fortunately, the theme "Love" is an easy one for me, since I "love" hearts and have a lot of them! Anna Sui is wearing a dress I made with a heart pocket; the little stuffed hearts were part of a 365 Heart a Day blog I did a few years ago; and the heart artwork was something I received in a craft swap. I've done pictures for this theme before, so I wanted this to somehow be different, and I accomplished that with the colors: I avoided the obvious pinks and reds and, using the heart artwork at my starting point, went with turquoise and purple instead.  

Newest Heart Pocket Dresses

So here they are--the three Heart Pocket dresses that I listed in my Etsy shop this week. They each have a felt heart pocket adorned with a flower, and a hairbow that matches the dress. I love these color combinations so much that I want to make more, more more!!

What's that peeking out of the top of the pockets, you ask? It's a tiny letter from one Blythe to another! I put those in there because an empty pocket would be boring.

A Special Pocket Dress

I'm working on a new batch of pocket dresses. In the past, they have all had heart-shaped pockets, but this one is a square. I made this "pocket" a few years ago when I was seriously into making felt badges...it started with a swap on Craftster.org, and I just kept going! That's one thing I liked about doing craft swaps: I would often learn a new skill I might not have tried otherwise. In this case, I learned how to craft cute little pictures on felt. I'm going to keep this dress (or should I say, Wendy here is going to keep it, because the colors are great on her!), but I'm working on another dress in the same fabrics that will have the heart pocket, and will be one of several that I will offer in my Etsy store next week.

The Surprising Origin of my Heart Pockets

I've started making these Heart Pocket dresses to sell in my Etsy store. Aren't they cute? 

I love to choose fabrics that coordinate well for the dress, and then come up with the perfect pocket design. You might be surprised to hear that these pockets started out as....

...scissor fobs!

I've always loved hearts, and a few years ago I challenged myself to make one heart every day for a year. I kept a blog about it here: 365 Sewn Hearts . It proved to be more and more difficult to come up with different hearts to make, until the middle of the year when I hit upon the idea of sewing scissor fobs out of felt. They were so much fun, I kept on making one every day for two months! 

I gave away a lot of the scissor fobs, but most of them just sat in a mason jar on a shelf until recently, when I decided to try using them as pockets on Blythe dresses. I was thrilled with how well they worked, so I plan to continue making these for the foreseeable future. 

 Here's how I started the bee dress: I had these perfect fabrics to match the bee fob, so I simply cut the fob apart to remove the back of the heart, then ironed it flat. I made the dress as usual, and added the pocket using hand embroidery. Cute!

I'm still using a lot of the scissor fobs for the pockets, but I'm also making new designs, or re-making some that I gave away. For these two identical dresses, I started by choosing the fabrics, then made new flower pockets to match them.

You can see all my newest creations in my shop: Blythe Happy