Felted Christmas presents

 I usually make or buy Christmas presents for the management at the store I work for. My managers are great, and it's nice to make something for them because they do so much for me year round. last year I made them all coffee cosies with themes I knew they would like. This year's gifts were fast and easy to make. Here was my inspiration.

My one manager loves Halloween, and so do I, so I made 2 of these. Here are the materials needed: felting needles, felted wool sheet, roving wool, wire, bell, embroidery thread and needle, finger protectors, and paper template.

Everyone in my family thinks I'm a hoarder, but I prefer the term collector. I literally had everything I needed and didn't have to buy a thing. For my moon, I actually used the white hair from our cat. It doesn't felt as well as wool, but is bright white, and gives a fuzzy effect.

There is a piece of styrofoam underneath to protect my needles and work surface.

The ground under the pumpkin is a mixture of wool and part of a wool shoe insert. I really like that it had different shades of brown in it. It makes it look like soil.
I didn't want to frame it, and came up with a blanket stitch with a variegated embroidery floss to finish the outside edges.

Adding white floss to make stars. I really like this feature.

What is not featured is the wire tentril that is added to the hat. I simply wound the wire around a paint brush handle, so one end is wide, and the other is tight, forming a cone shape.

Here is Snowball, playing with the roving. Quite entertaining until she takes off with a piece.

So I gave one of my managers her Christmas gift early, so she can hang it up for Halloween. After  I give the others their Christmas gifts, I will add to this post, and show you the others.

Keep on crafting!

My second felting gift is for my manager that loves Tim Burton. I watched some movies, and settled on the scene that has this curly mountain.

My challenge will be the cemetery fence.

Wire is used to make the cemetery fence

The next 2 gifts are going to be gnomes, one a Scottish Gnome (hope they have Gnomes in Scotland)

I knew one of my managers would look under the gnome's beard, so I added some wool clothes underneath.

This manager also loves plaid, so this gnome also has a plaid hat.

Was panicking as I had given away all my pom poms, and frantically searched for a stray pom pom or two. Was successful and was lucky enough to find some!

The tip of the hat has a bell sewed on.

I poofed up the hat with some poly fil just to make this piece more 3 dimensional.

Roughing in his clothes from some old wool clothing.

Using thick yarn for the Gnome's beard

I think I sewed the yarn in place, but may have just felted it in with the felting needle.

Making a mustache.

Brushing out the yarn, you can see the comb I used. I trimmed the mustache.

Here is the finished piece I added embroidery floss to make the snowflakes, and a cute present which was a square of foamboard covered in fabric, with a little bow on top, which I sewed onto the piece.

Here are the final pieces Hope you enjoyed my journey!