Sunday, March 30, 2014

How to Make Felt Eggs

Update: Our Felt Easter Eggs are now available for purchase in our Etsy store!


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If you have been following along on my Facebook page, you may have seen the sneak peek photos of my felt eggs. Well, here they are! And I have to admit, I am in love with them! They are so simple and cute! And they were pretty easy to make too. It took maybe two hours to trace, cut, sew and stuff them. 

I try to keep my felt crafts simple so they can easily be remade, so if you do not enjoy sewing you can use fabric glue or hot glue along the inside edge of these eggs and just stuff them or leave them flat. Originally we were going to use these single sheet eggs for a matching game, but my kids are getting older and match colours perfectly. So I decided I'd sew up the sides and add stuffing like our felt cookies. So far the kids have not wanted to add any decorations, so for now they remain plain. They love using them for pretend play and going on Easter egg hunts in our living room!

How to Make Your Own Felt Eggs

You'll need felt, stuffing, embroidery needles and embroidery thread. The egg template and disappearing ink pen is optional, it's just what I used.

1) Choose your egg pattern or freely cut them. Print and cut out the egg(s) you want to use. (I used a template similar to this one.) 

2) Choose the colours of felt you want to use. Use the paper egg as a stencil and trace around them using a disappearing ink pen. Then cut out the eggs. You'll need two for each egg. (We used the same colours for each egg, but you can go crazy and mix-and-match as you please!)


3) Pick out your threads and cut them to length. 54" inches is what I used for this size egg, with just a few inches to spare. (We use DMC embroidery floss for our felt crafts. You'll also need embroidery needles, if you don't own any already. They have a longer eye so you can easily thread your embroidery floss. Even though we chose ten colours for our felt, I only used one shade of each of these colours for the sets. I basically wanted the thread to look light on the dark felt and dark on the light felt. It makes the stitching stand out a bit more. I did my best with the colours we had available.)


4) Thread your needle. I used a blanket stitch but you can use any stitch you are familiar with. If you use the blanket stitch you'll need to put the two ends of the thread through the needles eye together. This will leave a loop at the end.


5) Start your first stitch from the back. Bring the needle and thread all the way through until you near the loop at the end. Slip the needle through the loop from the front. Pull tight, but not too tightly. You don't want the felt to bunch up. Move on to the next stitch. Start again coming up from the back and then slipping the needle from the front through the loop. Continue like this until you have an inch left to sew.


6) Gather up a small handful of stuffing and carefully fill the egg. You can add more or less depending on how full you want them to feel. We aimed for firm, but still squishy.


7) Once they are stuffed, continue sewing until you reach the last stitch.


8) You'll want to re-stitch through your first stitch. This will double-up the thread, but it will still look nicer than tying a knot. On the back of the stitch, slip your needle through the stitch and back through the loop. Pull tight for a small knot. Then slip your needle into the base of the stitch and out through another hole at the base of another stitch. Then cut the remaining thread. All done!


Then continue on to your next egg. It took appropriately an hour to sew all of the eggs, roughly five minutes for each egg.


I think they look wonderful! They actually look like painted river stones to me. Wouldn't they be a lovely addition to a small world set-up?


Immediately after I finished sewing them, I showed the kids and Bean started organizing them. She said, "these two go together and these two match too!" Even with only a few colours, she had fun sorting and matching them. 


Here's a sneak peek at what I made for the eggs! Little woven felt baskets!! Super cute! These will be perfect homemade gifts for Easter!

 

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