Everyone is looking for the perfect gift at Christmas time. While "the perfect" gift may vary from person to person, they do have some things in common. Great gifts show a special knowledge of the person receiving them. They are often one of a kind or hard to find. And finally, they show attention to detail on the part of the giver. This year, I found a great new way to meet all of these requirements in a gift that would work for just about anyone: the personalized felt ornament.
The first key is to decide what the person you are making this for is passionate about. In my case I made two ornaments this year. One was for a family that loves all things zombie and the other was for my son who is a competitive Pokemon player. If I can come up with ornaments for these, you can come up with an ornament for just about anything.
For the purposes of this tutorial, I'll be showing the zombie ornament. Curious how to get started on a project like this?
1. Use Google Images to look up images of the subject you are interested in. If that yields too many results, you may want to try looking up crafts related to your subject. For instance, I tried a search for "felt zombie". It didn't take me long to find a really funny zombie bunny in bright green. So I refined my search by looking at "felt zombie bunny."
2. Using ideas that I liked from different bunnies, I created a paper template for my ornament. First, I drew the outline of the bunny, and then each of the pieces that would go on the bunny: ears, eyes, and splotches.
3. There are several different ways to cut out your felt, but an easy one that I used for this project was packing tape. Cut out the paper pieces you want to use, place them on the felt and apply a piece of packing tape over the top. The packing tape needs to be big enough to just cover the template. It is okay to overlap the tape if you need more than one piece for a large template.
Once you've taped the pieces down, use a sharp pair of scissors to cut out your pieces. When cutting out pieces that you will need in pairs, you can double the felt over and cut two at once. I needed two of everything but the splotches.
Tip: When cutting out small pieces like the eyes, cut a small square around the piece before trying to cut out the actual object. Smaller pieces of felt are easier to maneuver.
4. Once you finish cutting out your pieces, you are ready to attach everything. I used a small amount of craft glue to tack my ears down and then did a blanket stitch around them to hold them in place. Don't know how to blanket stitch? Use this fabulous tutorial from Alice Merlino.
Then I used a whip stitch to attach one eye and a button to attach the other. A few quick stitches completed the mouth and nose. The blood splotches seemed to small and oddly shaped to sew on, so I just glued them down with craft glue.
5. Let everything dry for 30 minutes or so. The amount of time you should let your project dry will largely depend on the glue you use. Consult the packaging.
6. If you want, you can use this time to stitch a ribbon or yarn loop to the top of the back piece (wrong side facing you). That way, when you sew the front and back together, you will be able to hang your ornament.
7. Now you can place your front and back pieces with wrong sides together. Using the blanket stitch, start at the bottom corner and work your way around the ornament until only a 1-2" hole remains.
8. Insert a small amount of fiber fill and finish sewing the ornament shut.
