Felted Owl and a Butterfly hats from Martha Stewart

These hats would be adorable for young children for Halloween. Shown are an Owl and a Butterfly hat for a boy and girl. There are downloadable templates and a video with step-by-step instructions. Before starting this project, you will need to felt an old 100 percent wool sweater. Simply wash the sweater in a washing machine with plenty of detergent and hot water, and dry in clothes dryer on high heat. The soap, agitation, and heat will cause the scales of the wool fibers to open up, lock together, and condense. Washing the sweater with something made of heavy cloth, like a pair of jeans, will speed the process. You may need to wash and dry the sweater a few times — every sweater’s different. Test your sweater for felting by snipping the edge — it should not fray. If it does, wash and dry again.

Cross Stitch with Art is a Ukraine-based Etsy shop with more than 1,000 patterns covering a wide range of subject matter, from sarcastic (and stabby) animals to jokes about mental health, tarot cards, holiday designs and a lot more.

The funny and adult humor section is by far the largest, with lots of snarky word art designs, often with a floral wreath thrown in for extra cuteness. There’s a bit of swearing in here, too (as well as in other sections).

My favorite place because I love that there are enough of these sorts of patterns to warrant their own section, is the Chaotic Animal Society. I feel like this is a type of cross stitch pattern that I share often, but it is a bit of a trend right now, too.

This one is a racoon in its bathrobe drinking a coffee and reassuring us that nothing is under control. That’s pretty relatable. The design is 86 by 91 stitches and uses 9 colors. It comes out to a little less than 6.5 inches or 16.5 cm square on 14 count fabric.

There are also a ton of mental health quote patterns (here again with plenty of snark as you might imagine, but also some sweeter ones, too); Halloween, Christmas, Valentines and other holiday patterns; nature patterns divided into animals and flowers and landscape designs; BookTok patterns and more.

There’s a nice collection of made up tarot cards including the antisocial butterfly, a reading dragon and a rainbow haired unicorn doing yoga. You’ll find feminist designs, Celtic knots and tree of life patterns, blank frames you can add your own sentiments to and a bunch of fonts to help you do just that.

Even though that covers a lot of the chaotic fun happening in this shop, there’s really a lot to see so you should head over to Cross Stitch with Art on Etsy and see it for yourself!

[Photo: Cross Stitch with Art]

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