Last night, my brother and his housemates had a party. One of his housemates (Cesar) and I decided to get together and have craft time to make some decorations for this party. I suggested felt ornaments because I think they are so fun to make and pretty simple. Unfortunately, we did not end up making as many as we were anticipating (we each got like 10-15 pieces of felt!).
All of our supplies and Cesar cutting out circles
I picked four types of felt ornaments that I felt had good variety and still were straight-forward. I printed out instructions so we could easily reference the directions. I had fun, but Cesar felt like he was working in a sweat shop (he wanted me to mention this here). I guess these felt ornaments were a tiny bit on the tedious side and do require some sewing skills. It would have helped him to have youtube videos rather than printed out instructions.
Since I am a nerd, I decided to rate these on three categories: difficulty, time, and wow-factor (1 to 5 with 1 being the lowest and 5 being the highest).
1. Simple Ball Ornament
credit to
the Purl Bee; difficulty: 3, time: 2, wow-factor: 2
This one took a minute to wrap my head around, but once I got what was happening (this is one where a video might have helped), it went quite fast. I attached a star to the bottom to add some sparkle! I had plans to make these as ovals, stars, etc. which would make them a little more interesting.
2. Intricate Ball Ornament
credit to
Zakka Life: difficulty: 2, time: 4, wow-factor: 4
I really, really liked how this turned out. Since I only bought silver embroidery thread, the stitches were in stark contrast to the felt and made it look even more interesting. This also could look pretty cool if ovals were used instead of circles. I added a silver puff ball to the string for added cuteness.
3. Ogee Ornament
credit to
betz white; difficulty 1, time: 1, wow-factor: 3.5
I made this before with a tiny bit of felt. This turned out really well. Theoretically, it would look even better with stiffer felt. This is an ornament where the silver stiches detract rather than enhance, so it would have been better if I used green embroidery thread for this. Overall, from cutting to finishing, this took me maybe two and half minutes.
4. Random Funnel Ball Ornament
I wanted to make the funnels, but then I ended up folding my circles more and just made lots of creases and put them together. This took a bit of finagling to look good, but as I added more parts, it shaped up to look like a ball. I meant for the red and green to be distributed more around the ball, but they ended up bunching a bit.
In the end, we put up the four ornaments (Cesar only had a chance to finish 1/2 an ornament) on either side of the walkway between the hallway and the living room. We also go some non-Christmas color felt to make some to put up year round! So easy and fun!
