ornament craft: Making felt doves

a felt dove ornament

I mentioned it last week, but I realized some of you may have missed it: everyday this week I will have instructions for a new handmade ornament.  You probably caught on by now, seeing it’s wednesday and look! another tutorial.  This is my christmas gift to you–all my readers! I’ve said it before, but I mean it: you are awesome. And you deserve a present, or five.

This little bird takes four strips of felt and five stitches to make. Really, that’s it.

materials

• one 2in x 8in piece of wool felt
• needle and thread
• a little embroidery floss (that matches your felt)
• a disappearing ink pen
• a rotary cutter is nice, but scissors are fine too

directions

First cut your felt into four 8 x 1/4 inch long strips. Line them up nice and neat like I have below.

Make a mark on them with your disappearing pen at these measurements:

1. on the top strip at 1 1/2inches and 3 1/2 inches from the right
2. on the second strip at 1 1/4inches and 3 3/4 inches from the right
3. on the third strip at 1 inch and 4 inches from the right
4. and on the bottom strip 3/4inch and 4 1/2 inch from the right

Now stack up all the strips in the same order they are already in (bottom one on the bottom, then the third one on top, and so on). Flip the top one over when you stack it on top so the markings are hidden.

Take your needle and thread and on the right side where they are all lined up sew the strips together with a few stitches. This will make the beak of the bird. When you start hide your knot in between two of the strips and when you are done hide it again–do this for the next steps as well.

Next line up all the first dots you made and sew a few stitches to secure them together. You’ve just made the dove’s head.

Now line up the next set of dots and sew. Look! A bird! You can trim the tail however you like. You can round the edges, or make them fringey, or roll the strips up at the end and iron them a bit so they curl, or whatever else you can think of.

To make the hanger, take your embroidery floss (about 8 inches or so) and insert your needle where you made the neck stitch. And then again by the tail stitch. Put the ends of the thread together–you should have made a triangle where the base is the same length as the back of the bird. This sounds very weird when I say it, but in the picture it’s pretty obvious, right?

I used green embroidery floss so you could see it better, but you probably want it to match your felt. Tie the ends together and hang up that pretty christmas bird.

Source: elsiemarley.com