Stuffed Felt Ornaments

Posted by Cindy on December 3, 2008

These turned out so cute, and they were fairly easy for a beginning to intermediate sewing project.

Draw the shape onto a piece of felt, making it about 1/4″ bigger than you’d like the finished product to be.

Double the felt and cut out the front and back pieces at the same time.

Decide which sides will face outward. Go ahead and sew any buttons, beads or other small pieces onto each piece.

Place the fronts together so that you can only see the “wrong” sides.

Sew a straight stitch all the way around the felt, leaving about a 1/4″ seam. BE SURE TO LEAVE 1″-1 1/2″ OPEN SO YOU CAN TURN THE ORNAMENT INSIDE OUT.

After turning the ornament inside out, fill it with popcorn sized pieces of batting until it’s as fluffy as you desire.

Sew up the opening with a simple straight stitch.

The kids chose to add a little piece of embroidery thread afterward as a hook, but I sewed a ribbon hook into mine (bell) as I stiched around the edges. My hook is much stronger and more attractive.

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Filed Under: Christmas, Handicrafts and Life Skills

Tags: Christmas, handicraft, homeschool, sewing children

Paper Quilling

Posted by Cindy on January 3, 2008

Our Keepers At Home group met this week and it was my turn to lead the project. This meeting’s focus was on the art of Paper Quilling. I thought I’d teach the girls just a bit of history and some basic quilling techniques.

I found a wonderful webiste called My Paper Quilling that gave just the amount of history, basic quilling techniques and sample designs that I was looking for.

In preparation for Valentine’s Day, bright colored paper and some precut cardstock were set out so the girls could design their own Valentines. We didn’t have quilling tools, so they coiled the paper on pencils, chopsticks, toothpicks and other skinny round objects I found around the house.

We just used plain old paper and plain old glue. I’m certain there are fancier papers and glues to use for professional quilling, but the plain stuff worked fine for our purposes. Using toothpicks to place the glue worked very well.