Felt Ornament Pattern Making~ A Tutorial

I know it's still October but I am trying to get myself ready for Christmas (I know...insert groan here).  Although it's early I am planning on doing a mostly homemade Christmas.  I am trying again to do lot of homemade treats and gifts for the people I love.  I am also debating doing some craft shows/markets again.  I did the market last year for most of November and December but it was a lot work for little payoff (financially anyways).  Right now I am busy making cards and ornaments and last night I made a new felt ornament.  Making these ornaments is fairly straight forward but I thought I'd do a little tutorial to show how my ornaments go from a sketch, to a pattern and to a 3D object.

1.  Sketch out what you want your ornament to look like, keeping in mind that you will be cutting each piece out felt.  Unless you are skilled at cutting or have great little scissors you will want to keep each piece a reasonable size.

Jolly Santa sketch

2.  Outline your sketch with a black pen or marker.

3.  Trace each individual piece on a new piece of paper (I just used loose-leaf, I have about 10,000 pieces of paper but somehow no plain white computer paper).

It's not perfect, but it'll work.

4.  Cut out each piece and pin to the appropriate colour of felt.  Once pinned cut out around each piece.

5.  Put all the pieces together and stitch together.  I have no pics of this.  You have to be strategic about this, but I basically just wing it.  I also stitched on some eyes.

6.  Leave a small gap, add stuffing and stitch up.

Voila!  Jolly Santa!

So that's it!  That's the highly technical method I use to make my simple little patterns.