Heaven Sent

Time for Audrey's angel!  I've always liked this pattern.  I wanted to wait until she was old enough to understand that the angel is praying.  This one is pretty straightforward -- no special instructions or tricks.  I used my metallic silver fabric for the star to give her a little pizzazz.  I know Audrey will love her!

Winzit

Time for Allyson's mouse!  Between Allyson and my mom, I feel like I've already made a lot of the mouse patterns.  This is a total exaggeration, though, because, in reality, I've only made half of them.  But some of them just don't appeal to me at all.  Mouse sleeping under a mushroom -- no.  Mouse with a mushroom house -- no.  Pretty much anything involving a mushroom is on my "do not stitch" list.  I decided to do the Winzit pattern, but that stocking is just completely uninspired.  BORING!

I had some ornaments saved on Pinterest and one was a cute elf stocking.  I went looking for directions and a pattern for it and step one went something like this:  "Draw a stocking shape that you like."  No can do!  I Googled "elf stocking" and found something I liked.  I got it to a similar size as the one of the pattern and used it instead.  It's still a pretty basic design, though, and not too exciting.  Then I remembered the cool polka dot felt Ouida sent me and it was perfect for this project!  Very simple, very quick, and very cute!

Now that I think about it . . . I don't know why a mouse is sleeping next to an elf stocking.  Do you???

Berry X-mas Special with Tree

Spring has finally sprung in northeast Ohio!  We are knee-deep in weeds, mulch, and pool chemicals.  We have our first weenie roast of the season scheduled in just a few weeks.  We are ready for summer!

I wanted to do my mother's mouse ornament, but just wasn't feeling it the day I looked through my patterns.  I had joked with Ouida that when I ran out of mouse patterns, I was going to move on to the bear patterns and just replace their heads.  Annnnd . . . that's what I did.  According to Carolyn DeAngelis, this is actually the "Beary X-mas Special Bear with X-mas Tree."  I don't know what to call it now.  "Beary X-mas Special Bear with X-mas Tree and Mouse Head from Claude Pattern" really doesn't have much of a ring to it.  Here's the Claude ornament I made her a few years ago:

It was pretty easy to swipe his head and put it on the bear pattern, which gave me this:

And now I'm looking at these pictures and seeing the obvious omission that I hadn't noticed until this very second:  THIS MOUSE HAS NO TAIL!    I have no words for the shame.  Despite the number of pieces, this one really didn't take terribly long.  I used sequins and beads for the Christmas tree.  Get out your magnifying glass for that teddy bear, because that arm and ear are tiny!

I did want to take a moment to talk about hanger placement.  Sometimes, a finished ornament is very symmetrical and it's obvious where to tack the hanger to the back so it hangs straight.  Then you have ones like this.  When I get an ornament finished, I always stick a straight pin through where I think the center is like this:

Then I hold the pin between my thumb and middle finger and let it hang loose:

That'll show me how it would hang if I tacked the hanger there.  In this case, we're leaning a little to the right.  Move the pin and try again:

Now we're too far to the left.  One more try:

JUST RIGHT!

When you look through your patterns, don't forget to imagine what they'd look like with a different head.  It's easy to switch genders, turn bears into mice, people into animals, etc.  This really opens up a lot of possibilities for stretching your pattern collection and making more personalized ornaments for your friends and family!

Mogul Mike/Mariah

Happy belated Easter!  I didn't post yesterday because we were busy enjoying a holiday with both kids -- something we hadn't done before.  But ornaments wait for no one!

When  Clif shared his ornament photos with me years ago, I was struck by his Mogul Mike ornament and always wanted to make him.  

I had intended to make him for Scott a few years ago when he started skiing, but I never got around to it.  Now that Mariah skis with him, I decided to make the ornament for her.  And I'll try to get one made for Scott, too!  The first trick was to change the ornament to a girl.  And knowing that I'd like to make a second one, I wanted to do something just a little different so I didn't wind up with two of the same ornament on the tree.  (Why that matters, I do not know . . . but it does.)  I kept thinking of the Herald Angel ornament I made several years ago for Audrey and decided to steal her ponytail and profile.  

I didn't like that spit-curl thing that was happening on her face, so I omitted that.  I also decided to do a headband instead of a hat  . . . though Mariah is too cool to wear either of those things and prefers to just pull her hood up.  Here's my finished ornament:

You're probably wondering about the ski poles.  The poles themselves are just long, skinny rectangles that are stuffed with a pipe cleaner.  The round things at the bottom . . . . what ARE those things called?  I know they probably have a specific name, but I don't know it.  Anyway -- those round things at the bottom look like this:

It's two circles cut from my silver fabric with a hole punched in the middle.  Then I stitched them front to back, making sort of a donut.  (Yum . . . . now I want a donut!)  I put the poles through the middle and just used a tiny dot of hot glue to hold it in place.

She's really cute and Mariah LOVES her!

Olaf from "Frozen"

After Anna, I moved right on to Olaf.  He was simple and turned out great!

I stuffed his hands with stuffing and stuffed the arm part with pipe cleaners.  No picnic, let me tell you.  I had some decisions to make about his eyes.  This was the picture I had looked at for inspiration:

I liked the wiggle eyes, but the purist in me just wouldn't let me use them.  I just wanted them to be felt.  I used a regular hole punch for the white part and my 1/8" punch for the black part.  That seemed to work out size-wise.  I got them stitched on and they looked like this:

Blech.  I labored over it for a little while and decided to try stitching an outline around them.  I started with one eye:

That definitely made the difference!  On to eye #2:

I used two layers of felt for the nose.  I started stitching at the top left, went across to the top to the point of the nose, then down across the bottom.  When I got to the bottom right, I put the nose on the face and stitched the straight part through the two layers of orange and the layer of white, attaching to the nose to the face.  You can't tell from the picture, but the nose has some dimension that way and isn't completely stitched down to the face.  It sticks out a little.  (Does that make sense?)

I know in the movie, Olaf is substantially smaller than the humans.  I didn't want to make him to scale, because he would've been too small.  I did want to make him smaller, though.  Here he is next to Anna so you can see the proportion:

If you wanted to simpifly him, it would really be easy to do.  You could glue on all the facial features and the buttons and use wiggle eyes.  You could also just use a single layer of felt for the arms and hair.  Easy peasy!  If you're on my email list, I'll be sending you this pattern.  If you're not, drop me a line at feltornaments@yahoo.com I'll get it out to you.

I'm getting back to a couple of my "must stitch" ornaments before I design and stitch Elsa.  You'll just have to be patient!  I got out the pattern for Jeffrey Jump-Up (the basketball player) and shuddered.  I'll have to force myself -- he's got to be done!  I hope you've found a little time to stitch.  Don't forget to send me your pictures!

Anna from "Frozen"

DO YOU WANT TO BUILD A SNOWMAN?????

I have a confession that I might as well get out of the way right up front.  I haven't seen "Frozen."  I know -- the horror.  Somehow, that was a father-daughter outing and we even own the DVD but I still haven't watched it.  But that doesn't mean that I've managed to escape Frozen-mania.

I kept seeing Frozen-inspired felt ornaments crop on Pinterest and I really wanted to make a set for Mariah.  I looked at lots of pictures and took inspiration from here and there.  Then I looked for pictures of actual costume details.  I used these for inspiration:

One of the trickiest things was to decide how to do the hair.  Doing some sort of stuffed braids would've been a pain in the butt. I decided to go for accuracy and really braid the felt.  It turned out great!  Here's the finished product, and then I'll talk about some details:

You can see here how I slit the pattern piece for the hair into three strands and then braided them.  I did a simple tack at the bottom to hold them together.  Word to the wise:  Don't slit the braid pieces until the bitter end -- After you've stitched and after you've stuffed.  Because I'm hard-headed, I had to learn this the hard way TWICE.  Once on Brother Lee Love's hair and the second time on Leiloni.  When felt gets cut into a thin strip, it tears very easily.  I wound up doing patch jobs on both those ornaments.  Cut it, and then immediately braid it.  

I used two strands of embroidery flosss -- not thread -- to do the detail work.  The little dots are just French knots.  I didn't draw this on first.  I just freehanded stitched it . . . as you can plainly see from the imperfections and asymmetry!  

Here are the boots.  They turned out great,

On the skirt, I used some lazy daisy stitches.  (Google that if you're unfamiliar with them.  It's an easy stitch.)  If had to make one change, it would be on the skirt.  I would make the scalloped overskirt come up a little higher on the underskirt.  I always forget that things look one way flat on the paper and a little different stitched and stuffed.  The stuffing drags that scallop a little more down and under than I would've liked.

Here's the back.  The cape is a completely separate piece that's just glued on the front under the neck.  Different pictures of Anna show the cape at different lengths.  I like the short one, but you could easily make it longer by extending the pattern piece.  I did two pieces and stitched them together.  You don't have to -- I'm just OCD about having unstitched edges of felt on my ornaments.  (I know -- I'm in therapy.)  

Mariah LOVED her!  I'm already working on Olaf and he's turning out great.  The final piece will be Elsa.  She's actually a little boring.  (Did I just say that out loud?)  Mariah also wants me to do the reindeer.  (It is wrong that I don't know his name???)  We'll see how complicated he is and how my time holds out!

If you receive my email updates, I'll be sending this pattern directly to you.  If you don't and would like to have it, just email me at feltornaments@yahoo.com.  I hope you're stitching away.  Don't forget to send me photos of your finished projects!

Snow White

I realize I'm a day late with this post.  I was supposed to have a baby shower Saturday and it got snowed out and postponed until yesterday.  I went from post-shower cleanup straight to pre-Oscar news coverage, so you'll have to forgive my tardiness!

The baby shower was for my friend, Naomi.  Naomi and her husband, Dave, are the recipients of several of my ornaments, including the nurse and ninja that they proudly displayed at their wedding.

They know they're having a girl -- Penny Jean -- and I wanted to give her first ornament as a baby shower gift.  Naomi is a Disney movie fanatic, so it wasn't a difficult decision about what kind of collection to start for the baby.  What WAS difficult, however, was designing the ornament.  Since I can't draw, I'm handicapped and have to rely on adapting other patterns and using photos for inspiration.  I knew I wanted to do Snow White since she's the earliest Disney girl.

I have a computer file of ornament inspiration where I save pictures.  I had several different Snow Whites to look at and I borrowed bits from all of them.  I also checked images of Snow White online to make sure I used the correct colors.  I didn't realize until this ornament that Carolyn DeAngelis typically drew all her characters with long sleeves.  I had to go through several rounds of arms before I finally wound up with something that worked.  They're probably not great, proportionally speaking, but they work.  Here she is:

The arms are completely separate and glued on.  So is the white collar on the back.  I just couldn't figure out a simple way to deal with the sewing construction on those pieces.  The real Snow White has yellow shoes about the same color as the skirt.  That wouldn't have looked good for ornament purposes, so I made them red,  The apple is a little disproportionately large, but I wanted it that way because I kind of wanted it to be a focal point.

If you're on my email list, I'm sending you this pattern today with the blog update.  If you're new to this blog and would like this pattern, email me at:  feltornaments@yahoo.com.  I'll tell you here that the pattern includes the pieces for the apple, but the completed drawing doesn't show her holding that.  That was outside my drawing capabilities!

This ornament is a little out of order in terms of the the chronology of ones I've completed this year.  That upsets my inherent OCD nature, but it seemed fitting to share this one today since she was given away yesterday.  I will give you a teaser now and tell you that Anna from Frozen is designed and completed and she is fantastic!!!  But you'll have to wait a few weeks to see her.  She's worth the wait!

Happy stitching!