Wooly Draftbuster Tutorial~ Snowy Day Craft

by Phoebe

We had our first big snowstorm yesterday- not flurries, or a dusting, but a good 10 inches of wet heavy snow. Since this is our first year not homeschooling, this was our families first "real" snowday! It was the perfect time to make something to keep our house cozy and warm: draftbusters.

We started by finding Mother's box of wooly scraps. These date back to her rug hooking days, and include a variety of hand-dyed, store bought, and thrifted woolen fabrics. A great way to obtain these is to buy quality woolen ladies' suits at the thrift store (Pendleton are great!) and cut the wool into pieces. If you wash them in hot water and machine dry them, they will "felt" or "full" into lovely thick wooly fabrics.

Mother and Sister chose some of their favorite fabrics in fairly similar widths. Aren't the colors beautiful?

Sister carefully selected some colors of worsted weight wool yarn to add a few embroidered details to each draftbuster.

While Sister carefully hand-stitched a few motifs, Mother machine-sewed the pieces of wool together into long strips, about 12 inches wider than the threshold of the doorways.

Father and Big Brother filled the woolen sleeves with unpopped popcorn. Mother was so happy to find another use for some of our fifty pounds of popcorn kernels! We secured the open end with a tight wool yarn bow, triple knotted. This way, we can empty them at then end of the winter and wash the woolen sleeves before storing them for the summer.

Here is a view of the snowflake Sister stitched. We live in an old house and the doorways can tend to be a little drafty...

Not any more. Snug and cozy, now!