The Winged Donut

  Example of a backstitch on the main donut body When working with felt, the choice of hand stitch you use to finish a piece as well as add details is important for making it look at good as possible. It needs to be neat and tidy, but also look great too.  The go to choice for many crafters in the world of felt is the blanket stitch. It looks lovely and uniform, as well as being a excellent way to keep your pieces secure. It adds a lovely handmade charm, which immediately draws you in with cozy vibes as well as the knowledge that a piece is made with love and time. Example of a blanket stitch. Credit; Beth Colletti (bethcolletti.com) So, with all that in regard, why don't I use that stitch on my own pieces? Well, there's actually a couple of reasons. First off; I'm terrible at it. I have practiced the art of the blanket stitch many a time over the years. As someone who works with felt, and who has spent hours researching, learning and developing my skill, the blanket stitch...

 Welcome to the first Designing Donuts post, where I show off sketches, WIPs and discuss my inspirations and thought processes when designing new plushies! So this weekend my main aim was to actually finish a couple of designs that I'd started last year, and also revisit some older designs that I'd made smaller versions of, and see about making them into the regular sized plushies. The first of the designs to finish is already done, and the second is being filled and sewn, of which both will be ready for monday.  Pictured; Blue iced donut plush with purple wing and white daisy decals Pictured; A WIP of a ghost themed donut Both of these designs will be in my Folksy store on monday! There is also a second variation of the daisy donut, of which the main body is a heart, but I made it with no centre hole. That design may get revisited and maybe the original will get finished, but as of the moment I am focusing on the standard round shape. I was really inspired by simple bold desi...

 I love making with felt. It's my favourite thing to use when making anything. When I first started to use felt, I wasn't aware of the types you could buy, and only knew of acrylic, which was easily accessable to me and very affordable. However, as I grew to learn more about myself as a maker, I realised that there were other felts available; these being wool and polyester. I wanted to talk about my personal experience with each type of felt, and the pros and cons that come with them, so starting with the one I was the most familiar with from the start; acrylic. Food projects that were made using acrylic felt (pictured; Blue box with cornflakes bowl, red cola can with cola bottles on the front, purple juice pouch with an apple decal) I've made a lot of felt foods with this felt. Since I believed it was all that was available, I just stockpiled as much as I could and would make pretty much everything with it. When I had an Etsy shop about 8-9 years ago, I would make and sell...

  Hello! Since this is a new blog, I thought the best way to start it would be with a welcome. I'm Ashe, the owner of The Winged Donut, a shop you can find on Folksy; I create felt donut plushies, something I have been doing for a couple of years, and I originally sold through Etsy, but the shop came to a close after some changes over on the site made it harder to sell (I will cover that in a future post because I do have some opinions regarding Etsy and the perspective of being a UK seller) This blog is not just going to be a space for promoting my shop, rather a space for logging my creative process, particularly in design. My intention is to share how I come up with my designs, and discuss some of my methods, why I use them, etc. I find social media is quite limiting in the fact I don't feel I can articulate my feelings and opinions as well, and thus the reason for the blog. I'm very new to blogging so this will be very fun and interesting for me, and hopefully those of ...