Felt Ornament: Snowman

Inspiration: Our neighbors have some nice traditions at the holidays.  One couple stops by on Christmas Eve each year and delivers a bag full of cookies and a fruit/nut bread along with some yummy Bourbon Balls.  Others just drop off cards, sometimes with cookies or a small gift.  We often drop off hamantaschen during Purim (any where from early March to mid-April) and cards for different holidays.  Given the stay at home orders this year and knowing many of our neighbors were staying home for the holidays and unable to celebrate with their extended families, I made extra little ornaments to drop off with our cards.

How I Made Them: Like most of my ornaments, I started with making templates.  I made one for the body/head that was a slightly smaller circle above a larger one.  I made a template for the hat and the hat band and one for the carrot nose.  Using the templates for each snowman, I cut from felt:

• two white bodies
• 1 black hat
• 1 orange nose
• 1 colored hat band

Then I glued the bad to the hat.  I stitched the nose near the head and stitched the hat onto the head.  All with embroidery floss (orange for the nose and black for the hat).  For the first set I made, I glued on googly eyes.  For the second set, I sewed on blue or green pony beads for the eyes.  I searched through a jar of old buttons I had looking for matches.  I used pairs to sew onto the bodies.  Then I took quilt fabric scraps cut into 2" squares.  I folded one into thirds and sewed it around the neck.  I took a second one more loosely folded in thirds and secured one end at the neck and then cut little slits at the far end.  It made a nice scarf.  I used white embroidery floss and blanket stitched the back of the head/body onto the decorated front, pausing to add a lobster claw hanger and to stuff it with polyfill.

Alternatives: There are so many ways to be creative with these.  Besides switching eyes between googly eyes and pony beads, other things I might try in the future include:

• more than 2 buttons if they're smaller
• finding a way to incorporate small twigs as arms
• adding a flower to the hat (like Frosty's in the animated classic)
• Finger weaving or knitting small scarves to use instead of fabric
• Adding a small ribbon smile
• Seeing if I can find something that looks more like a carrot for the nose

Felt Ornament: Turtle

Inspiration: I don't know about you but between the weather and doing pretty much everything at home, I'm starting to get some cabin fever.  I'm also running out of ideas of things I really want to make.  Last week, I just had a day where I felt like I needed to make something and I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do.  I remembered this cute little turtle my daughter used when we were creating a Scratch program, so I decided to use that to make my next piece.

How I Made It: I printed 3 copies of the image.  Then I cute them out.  I cut out parts, traced out templates with card stock.  Then cut and traced some more until I was pretty sure I had all the pieces I was going to need.  (It really wasn't very many - body, back, back edge, front leg, 2 back legs, tail, cheeks, and some spots).  I looked through my current felt supply and decided on colors (mostly greens) and I used the templates I created to cut out the pieces.  I sewed the pieces together using embroidery floss and applique stitches.  I sewed the 2 body pieces together with blanket stitches, pausing to add a hanger (lobster clip with a loop), and to give it a little Polyfill stuffing.  I finished it by gluing on googly eyes.

Things I'd Do Different: I kind of think the head part is a little long from the body so I might reshape if I want to do over or else reposition the spots so it looks better.  I could also add in some embroidery stitching to make the turtle's back a little more elaborate.