Welcome to the final leg of the Sizzix Fresh Vintage Blog Hop featuring the Petal Power die from, my friend, the amazingly talented Eileen Hull.

I’ve really enjoyed seeing what all of the designers in the hop have done with the dies they were given and I had to stretch my brain to come up with a project that no one else had done. PLUS Thursday is usually reserved for my Thrifting Thursday posts and SOMEHOW I managed to work a Thrifting post and a Sizzix post all into one project!!

I found this 100% wool sweater at the thrift store this spring. It started out being an extra large but I washed it in hot, soapy water until it would nearly fit my miniature schnauzer. PLUS I had a couple of yards of black wool suit weight fabric that I’d also found at the thrift store on a different trip.

I’d been wanting to use my felted sweater for a while now but I hadn’t found the perfect project for it until I started to wonder if a Sizzix die would cut heavy felted wool. It takes some muscle but it can be done!

I cut the black suit wool to 18 x 18 inches (for a 16 x 16 inch pillow form) for the pillow (CUT 2) and then sewed, with red thread on my sewing machine, straight lines on two sides of the black wool (9 lines along one side and 6 along the other). I didn’t worry about getting the red lines perfectly straight. I wanted them to have a little “wobble”.  Repeat the red lines on the wool for the back of the pillow.

Then, I ran the Petal Power die through the Sizzix six times to get the petals for my felted wool flower. After running the wool through the die there will be little wool bits all over the die. A lint brush (the kind with sticky paper) rolled over the die a few times will remove all of the lint.

(I’m not going to recommend using packing tape wrapped around your hand to remove the lint because someone will cut themselves!)

As you can see above I used a running stitch and hand sewed the first layer of petals down. I used 6 strands of red embroidery floss.

I used the embroidery thread again and a made up stitch (it probably is a real stitch with a name but I don’ t know what it is!) to stitch the second layer of petals down.

Finally, I finished off the flower by stitching four of the wool flower centers into the center of the big flowers with french knots.

The first round of french knots really sunk down into the felt so I went back and added a second french knot on top to help the knots show up better. I wanted little dots of color in the center of all that grey.

Put the two pieces of fabric right sides together and stitch with a 1/2 inch seam allowance leaving an opening big enough to stuff with either loose pillow filling or a pillow form. Turn right side out.

Slip stitch closed.

Once you are finished sewing use the lint brush to clean up any stray bits of grey wool from the black and you are ready to enjoy your new home decor accent!