Felt Chicken & Egg Easter Ornaments Tutorial

Make some cute felt chicken and egg ornaments this spring with this easy sewing tutorial, now available on my Patreon as part of a growing library of crafty PDF patterns and tutorials.

 

Felt ornaments aren’t just for Christmas!

Decorate a Spring or Easter display with these cute felt chicken and egg decorations – they’d look fab hung from doorknobs, or from a cluster of budding twigs in a vase. I think they'd also make lovely gifts.

I used three pastel colours to make my ornaments (pastels for spring is such a classic look!) but you could go bolder or choose more realistic chicken and egg shades. A whole garland of chickens in different colours (maybe a rainbow??) would look awesome.

You could also use the templates to sew felt chicken brooches (in my opinion you really can’t have too many fun felt chickens).

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A Very Special Set of Felt Ornaments

I'm sharing photos today of an old project that I've realised I never blogged about!

I stitched these ornaments for a special couple about a decade ago. Each decoration featured one of their hobbies or other favourite things: from a stack of beloved books, to a tent to represent their many camping holidays, to a portrait of their cats.

Working on these was quite a challenge but a very fun one and I'm still really proud of the end results.

I loved the camera ornament so much it became part of my shop range for many years and I'll be bringing the design back later this year as a printable pattern.

I'll also be revisiting the books design very soon as I'm planning something book-themed for February. (Make sure you're signed up to my free pattern newsletter if you're interested!)

Here's a closer look at the other ornaments in the set...

A film clapperboard:

An acoustic guitar:

Knitting needles and yarn:

The TARDIS:

 A tent:

A Nick Drake record:

A pink gerbera daisy:

A cup of Tim Hortons coffee:

And those cute kitties!

What themes would you pick if you made a set of ornaments like this for yourself?

Lots of Sparkly Felt Owl Ornaments!

I've been trawling through my photo archives a lot lately looking for old project photos and a few weeks ago I found a folder of photos from a project I never shared here on my blog!

 
Way back in 2012 I posted a tutorial for making felt owl ornaments, adapted from the plush owl sewing tutorial I'd shared the previous year.

A few years ago I decided to revamp this tutorial, sewing lots of colourful felt owls as samples and taking step by step photos to make the post even more useful.

I stitched a whole batch of sparkly owls and took and edited photos of them...

... but never got round to taking the step photos or writing a new version of the tutorial!

I think I ended up being too busy and deciding that the original tutorial was perfectly good (which it is!) and just selling my finished felt owls and forgetting about them.

Having rediscovered the photos, though, it feels wrong to just let them sit gathering virtual dust so I thought I'd share them with you guys today.

Maybe they'll inspire you to visit my felt owl ornaments tutorial and make some cute and sparkly decorations of your own during the holidays? 

 

If you're celebrating Christmas tomorrow, I hope you'll have a great one xxx

How To: Sew Easy Felt Gingerbread Men Christmas Ornaments

I'm squeezing in one more free Christmas craft tutorial before the main event: cute little felt gingerbread men decorations!

 

Or should that be Gingerbread People??? :)

Whatever you want to call them, these fun felt ornaments are super quick and easy to sew. They'd be perfect for beginners, for sewing with kids, or for those times when you just want a nice, relaxing project to work on.

 

A set of these would make a lovely Christmas gift, and one ornament would be fab tied to anothe present or slipped into a Christmas card. I think they'd also make cute brooches! Just add a brooch clasp instead of a ribbon loop.

These gingerbread men ornaments are an updated version of a design I stitched for my shops many years ago. Here's the new style...

... and here are the old ones!

 

As you can see, originally I used black sequins for the eyes and gave my gingerbread fellas big laughing mouths. This time round I've opted for beads for the eyes and a single curved line for the smile but you could copy the old version if you prefer them!

You will need:

- Ginger coloured craft felt (this may be a bit tricky to find in your local craft store if they just stock a small range but there are loads of online craft shops that stock a huge range of felt colours)
- Round sequins in assorted colours
- White sewing thread
- Black sewing thread
- Black seed beads (or small round black sequins)
- Narrow ribbon
- Sewing scissors
- The templates provided at the bottom of this post

To Make a Felt Gingerbread Man Ornament: 

1. Use the template provided to cut out two shapes from ginger coloured felt. Set aside one of the pieces for the moment.

2. Give your gingerbread man two eyes. You could use black seed beads for this, or small black sequins or just sew a couple of large French knots from black embroidery thread (floss).

If you're using seed beads (as shown above), sew each bead flat like an O with three or four stitches of black sewing thread. If you're adding small sequins, sew each sequin in place with two or three stitches of black sewing thread.

3. Now give the gingerbread man a smile! Use backstitch and a double thickness of black sewing thread so sew a small curved line for the smile.

For extra-happy gingerbread men, also sew a straight line across the top of the smile - creating a sideways D shape, and making it look like the gingerbread man is laughing or has a big grin.

4. Add sequins, mini buttons or little felt circles for the gingerbread man's buttons.

I used three different coloured sequins for each of my gingerbread men, sewing them in a row with white sewing thread. I used two stitches to secure each sequin, so all the stitches formed a neat(ish) vertical line. If you're using sequins which are all the same colour, you may prefer to use sewing thread to match them.

5. Cut a piece of narrow ribbon (approx 7 inches / 17.5 cm long) and fold it into a loop. Secure the cut ends to the top of the second gingerbread shape, with whip stitch and any colour sewing thread. Sew into the felt not through it, so your stitches won't be visible on the outside of the ornament.

Tip: the gingerbread template isn't completely symmetrical, so before you add the ribbon make sure you're attaching it to the correct side of the gingerbread shape! You'll want both shapes to line up neatly when you place them together, with the cut ends of the ribbon sandwiched between them.

6. Place the front and back of the gingerbread man together, and sew around the edge with running stitch and white sewing thread. Use small even stitches so the layers are sewn together but you also end up with a nice decorative edging to the ornament.

For a different look (with less visible stitching) you could use matching ginger sewing thread to sew the ornament together.

This tutorial is for non commercial use only: you can use it to make as many gingebread men as you want for yourself or as gifts, but please don't make any for sale. You may borrow a couple of photos if you want to blog about this project, but remember to credit me and link back to this page on my blog, and do not reproduce my entire tutorial / share my templates on your site. Thanks!

Click here to open the template sheet in a new window, make sure you're viewing it full size then print it at 100%.

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Felt Doves: Sew Pretty Bird Ornaments for Your Christmas Tree

UPDATE:  I originally shared this project with my newsletter subscribers, it's now available as a printable PDF pattern in my Etsy shop!

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Learn to sew some pretty felt doves...

 

 

 

The doves tutorial includes a step-by-step guide to sewing the ornaments, and templates for two sizes of the birds.

 

You can stitch plain white doves or add embellishments for extra loveliness. The bigger doves are particularly great to decorate as there's more space to work with!

I added sequins and beads, and also embroidered one of the doves' wings with some snowflakes.

 

I love how all of the doves I stitched turned out, but I'm particularly pleased with the snowflake one!

The ornaments are double sided, so you make two sides that are a mirror image of each other. Here's an in-progress pic of one of the sequinned doves:

P.S. I talk about these designs as being Christmas craft projects, but of course you don't need to celebrate Christmas to want to sew a sparkly dove! If you're not a lover of Christmas I hope you'll forgive my linguistic habit and stitch yourself some felt birds anyway xx