Its day three of my week of Christmas felt ornament tutorials. Yesterday I shared my cute little Mini Elf Stockings. Today, learn to sew a matching Mini Elf Hat! Perfect for fabric scraps, full of potential to be creative and make them your own, and really, really sweet.
You will need:
- Colourful felt
- Marching and contrasting embroidery floss*
- Embroidery needle
- Thin ribbon (approximately 12cm per hat)
- Tapestry needle (the eye needs to be big enough to thread your chosen ribbon)
- Optional – bells, buttons, beads
- Scissors and pins
*use two strands of embroidery floss throughout, or try Perle cotton.
- Cut out the pattern pieces; you’ll just need two hat shapes.
2. Cut a few long, thin triangles in a contrasting felt. These are for creating some quirky stripes on the hats.
3. Position your stripes so they lay at funny angles across one of your hat pieces.
4. When you are happy with the positions, pin them in place.
5. Use a small running stitch to secure your stripes in place. These hats are supposed to look rustic and homespun, so don’t worry about making your stitches too neat or even.
6. Use the edge of your hat as a guide to trim away the excess felt triangles now hanging over the edge.
7. Now decorate your hat using whatever stitches you feel like! I added a few orange stars as follows. First, make a longish straight stitch…
8. The add another to make a cross…
9. Now create a diagonal stitch…
10. And finally, another diagonal stitch in the opposite direction…
11. I added a few more orange stars…
12. Then some teeny, tiny white ones…
13. And, because I don’t know when to stop, I finished with a few navy french knots…
14. If you want to, you can repeat the decoration on the other side of the hat. I knew the back of my hats wouldn’t be on show, so I skipped this bit (also because I get bored doing the exact same thing twice!)
Next, pin your hat pieces wrong sides together and secure using a blanket stitch.
15. When you get to the point of the hat, you can thread a jingly bell onto the blanket stitch if you want to.
16. Then continue your blanket stitch all the way to the other side of the hat. Don’t forget to keep the bottom open so that the hat will still fit on a tiny elf head.
17. Finally, use a tapestry needle to thread your ribbon through a blanket stitch. I find aiming for the stitch directly opposite the bell helps the hat to hang at a jaunty angle, but its entirely up to you where to put it. Tie the ends in a knot to make a loop ready for hanging.
18. And there you have it, a little elf hat to hang on your tree. This one ended up looking a bit wizardy, so you could aim for something a bit more traditional by focussing on green and red. Or why not use red and white as a nod to the big man himself?
Really, anything goes! Use whatever colours, stitches and trimmings take your fancy. And don’t forget, you can team up with my Elf Stockings – you can find the tutorial here.
If you love to sew, try joining my Creative Sewing Challenge. You get sent a fabulous prompt straight to your inbox each month, which we use as a challenge to sew something inspired by that theme. Its free, its fun, and it keeps sewing on the agenda during these crazy. busy days. Find out more here or sign up below.
And here’s a handy pin for later! Join me tomorrow for my mini felt tree ornament, its super cute.
