Felt Failure

Remember this?

The famous felt rosebud bowl. From the moment I saw it, I knew I wanted it. Big time bad. So when I “had” to mosey on over to Jo-Anns for some fabric, I thought I’d check out their felt. I mean, the tutorial says that she got the felt at Jo-Anns, so done and done. Easy peasy. I poured over the different colors and decided to boringly choose the exact same one as the picture. I also got big, bright green buttons to fasten the ends. LOVE! I had visions of stored knitting projects dancing in my head. But joke’s on me - this tutorial is a lie. OK. That sounds very mean to the person who created it. It could very well just be me and my soft brain. But using the felt from Jo-Anns, this is what I came up with:

The obvious issue is the thickness of the felt. The only felt I found at Jo-Anns was this kind which was on a bolt. Well, they also sell those 12″ craft pieces, but that wouldn’t work. Obviously. Another issue is the folding part. It says, “fold up the each side, layering as you rotate to the next.” Wrong. If you do that, you’ll just have a big circle. If you look at the top picture, you can see that you actually have to first fold up three alternating sections and then the remaining three sections. Do you see it? If they were done layer over layer, the button wouldn’t be connecting those two flaps. It would be connected to the one that is underneath Do you see it???!!! That’s the only way you’ll get a bowl inside a bowl (which is what is pictured above in my “bowl”). Believe me, I tried to make this “simple” felt folded bowl for THIRTY MINUTES! I cut out different sizes and tried shorter/longer slits in the fabric, you name it. Ryan walked in at about minute 28 and saw my deflated face. And then basically laughed in it when I told him why it looked like that.

But I didn’t give up. I took to the streets (Etsy) to find some thicker felt. I mean, they obviously don’t sell it at my Jo-Anns. In the tutorial’s defense, the Santa Monica Jo-Ann Fabric is GET-TOW. The first time I pulled into the parking lot, I thought it had just closed its doors and gone out of business. Nope. Anyway, I found some thicker felt on Etsy. Of course, there were different thicknesses. But they were measured in millimeters and the tutorial gave a vague inch measurement. (Side note - don’t foreigners know they’re the only ones who use the metric system? It lost all its novelty and coolness when I was in, like, eighth grade. I’m assuming, since I never heard of it again.) Was I supposed to open another tab and look up conversions? Hahaha. No. Only an idiot would do that. So I just went with the medium thickness. I was gauging by the picture which is a sure-fire way to measure, right? Duh. So I impatiently waited for the new felt to arrive. In the meantime, my felt rosebud/garbage bowl was staring me in the face every day. I couldn’t throw it out for some reason (probably hoarding).

A week later [insert eyes bugging out] it came in the mail. It was super thick. It looked JUST like the felt in the picture. SCORE! I practically ripped it out of the package with my scissors in hand to IMMEDIATELY cut it up. Actually, that is exactly what happened. No measuring or browsing over the directions one more time or anything. Why would I have to? I tried it for a full half-hour only a week ago. So…

You can’t see the whole thing because I would have had to stand on a chair and I’m pretty lazy, but…I cut an octagon. And then cut the slits. And then was like “Wait. Weren’t there only three sections to fold in initially…SON OF A BEE STING!” BUT, I figured that the concept would still work. In theory, right? Just fold up four alternating sections and then the other. Nope. It still didn’t look like the picture remotely. I think I need even thicker felt. Ryan was all “Just buy more felt!” and I was like “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! FELT IS DEAD TO ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” But since this happened 5 days ago, I’m feeling a slight change of heart. Maybe I’ll get the thickest one. Maybe I’ll cave and do the whole metric conversion business. Ugh.

SO! Should I spend more money on felt only to have my utter felt failure thrown in my face again? Or should I just see if this lady sells these blasted things on Etsy? At this moment, it might be cheaper to just buy the finished product. I guess throwing in the towel is also a choice. Decisions, decisions…