Say Hello To Tommy

  This week has been a busy one. I finally got my quilt back from the quilter's. It has taken me several years to finish the Bee In My Bonnet Quilty Barn Along but whew....it is almost all done! The quilter that the quilt shop uses is so fast! I have used Kay before and she is amazing. Very meticulous and a perfectionist. I will be starting on the binding this weekend. To celebrate the end of this journey I wanted to make a fun little "tool". It is a needle book that is also a scissors fob. I made this scissors fob as a dual purpose tool years ago. I needed a scissors fob for a quilt class that I was taking. I wanted to be able to tell my scissors from my neighbor's if we happened to have the same pair of scissors but I also wanted to keep up with my needles. So as the old adage goes "Necessity is the mother of invention". I joined the two. Back then I just made a plain looking needle book/scissors fob out of felt with a felt heart on the cover. But this time since my cutie pie quilt is a farm theme I decided to go with something a little farmy. What is more farmier or cuter than a smiling tomato!

Tommy the Tomato

Such a sweet little guy :)

List of supplies:

8"x7" square of red wool felt

4"x6" square of white wool felt

2"x2" square of green wool felt

12" piece of 3/8" wide ribbon

4" piece of 1/8" wide ribbon

red thread and white thread for sewing machine

2- 4mm black beads for eyes

white craft tacky glue

black embroidery floss-one strand for freckles and two strands for mouth

sewing machine (optional-you could do this by hand)

scroll down for pattern

Cut out pattern pieces. Cut out all felt shapes. Cut out one slender piece of white felt (about 1/4" wide) the length of a white "page". Sew this slender piece onto the white page (photo below shows the placement).  Set aside.

Slender piece of felt stitched onto the first page.

Stitch the face on using french knots for the freckles, two strands of embroidery floss for the mouth and don't forget the eyes :)

Take the two pieces of red felt (one is the face and the other is plain) and sandwich the ribbon between them. Use your sewing machine zig zag stitch to stitch all the way around the tomato being very careful to catch both ribbons in these stitches. I like to use these settings for zig zag: stitch width 1.5 and stitch length 2.0. Go ahead and stitch the other two red felt tomatoes together, this set will be referred to as plain tomato. Now it is time to create the sandwich. Layer in this order from bottom to top: plain tomato, white page, other white page, face tomato. Stitch along 3/8" ribbon side to create a binding for your book-above photo shows stitch line. Click on the picture to see it better.

Stitch the button on. For the leaf cut a small slit, push stem through slit and using a tiny drop of glue, glue the stem onto the leaf. Now glue the leaf to the top of the tomato right above the eyes. Let dry for an hour or so. Yay! You have finished your sweet little tomato. You can add more pages if you like, just keep in mind that the more pages you add the longer your 1/8" wide ribbon will have to be to reach the button.

Now you will never get your scissors confused with anyone else's. 

Also great for rotary cutters!

2nd page with pins.

To make sure that the pattern prints out to correctly I have included a scale on the bottom. It is in inches. You can always enlarge or shrink the pattern according to how big or small you want your scissors fob/needlebook. 

Hope that you enjoy making him and don't forget to keep those hands busy,

Holly