Spring is here! A flowery brooch to celebrate

My little monkey's key worker (so they call the girl who looks after her at Pre-school...at my time it was "the Teacher") is moving to pastures new. Nothing special there, a part from the fact that my motherly anxiety has kicked in...it is already difficult to leave your child with somebody that is not family for 8 hours a day...then you realise pre-school staff are also human beings, and that actually that is a JOB for them...but I really liked and trusted this girl! so the penny dropped this week, which is the last one at little monkey's pre-school for this sweet girl, who has been truly amazing in the last year and a half and a reference point for my daughter.
I have been thinking about her leaving present since when it was announced she was leaving, and I even bought the fabric to make her a little purse...until I decided to make a flowery necklace for her, which in the end became a brooch ;) - by the way, am I the only one who changes her mind one million times before finally sitting at the sewing table? Sometimes I feel like I'm going to the cinema and I'm not quite sure which movie I want to watch...that same excitement that precedes something good...
Anyway, cutting a long story short, this is the brooch I made for Chelsey this week:

I got inspired by some beautiful hand felted and fabric jewellery I found online. And for the first time, I hand-felted a few little balls of wool. It was surprisingly easy and quick (a couple of minutes per ball) and I just followed one of the many tutorials there are on the web. Check this tutorial out, for example.
I also used sheet of craft felt, various fabric scraps and a button. I started with the polka dot fabric rose, just rolling a stripe of folded fabric on itself to make it look like a rose bud, and fixing it with a couple of stitches when I was happy with the result. But again, if you want a more precise result, there are lots of tutorials on the Internet for fabric roses (this one for example). I then laid and twisted a few felt and fabric circles next to the rose, as a sort of calla lilly and added a felt ball at the centre. I repeated the same with a different scrap of fabric and felt and added a button and a machine finished leaf to the lot.
All finally stitched to a piece of felt on which I attached a brooch pin. This flowery brooch is hand stitched a part from the leaf.

I hope Chelsey will enjoy her flowery brooch, which I hope will remind her of my little monkey and will probably sit pretty on a bag or a coat...and good luck to her for her next adventure!

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