Rooster!

Well, all right, here is the project I couldn't tell you about. My little sister's birthday is this month and I wanted to make her something special. She's just moved into a new house so I thought a rooster for the kitchen would be appropriate. Roosters have long been used in kitchens for good luck. Who couldn't use some of that?

It's a trivet, if you can't tell. 4 layers of felted wool sweater goodness to keep the heat off of the dining room table. (as a side note, the trivets at my house are only 3 layers thick, and while I think they're just fine, some other people disagree)

To make the rooster I first found a picture of a real live rooster that I liked the shape of. I traced it out onto computer paper, making sure I outlined all the major shapes. Then I cut the tracing up into all it's pieces - there were about a dozen of them. Then I used those as templates to cut out pieces from different felted sweaters which were hand stitched onto a piece of yet another felted sweater. Phewph!




Now, my little sister (she's 25, by the way, not really all that little) is not really all that "country" so I tried to make it as modern as possible. In case the rooster just didn't do it for her there's a surprise on the back - guess what, it's double sided! I monogrammed a letter R onto a lovely shade of green because my sister's first and last names both start with R.

It's all done in teeny random seed stitches in two colors of thread just for fun. I always use at least 3 colors on my projects - life in monotone is boring.

Of course, when it was time to send it away the kids got involved. Here's eldest daughter's rooster - she traced the original rooster, colored it in and cut it out with fancy scissors herself. It's pictured here sitting on top of the original picture that we both used as a template.

Happy Birthday, sis!

I promise not everyone will get trivets for their birthdays this year.... not everyone...