How to Create a Pattern for a Felt Ornament

Last Christmas I had a goal to give handmade gifts instead of store bought or boring gift cards. I had done it a few of times over the years with great success and appreciation. In this tutorial I'm going to teach you how to turn a picture into a working pattern.

First, had to decide what I was going to make. Well, it was for a Christmas gift.. Instantly, my thoughts turned to ornaments. The new Peanuts movie had just came out, so I decided to make a set of Snoopy ornaments.

Off to Pinterest I went to brainstorm. I came across several Snoopy ornaments that Bucilla made a kit for in the 1980's. I am very familiar with Bucilla because I made both my daughter's Christmas stockings, among other things, from their kits. 

The Bucilla kits come with everything you need to make the project, all stamped out, ready to cut, and assemble. 

Considering the ornaments I wanted to make were out of production, I set out to create a pattern.

Step one: Find a picture

Search Pinterest, Google, Flickr, or your favorite platform for the pattern you want to create. Pick a picture that is clear and has a plain background.

Here's a picture of one ornament I wanted to make a pattern for:

From Etsy

Step two: Prepare and print your image

Once you have your picture, save it to your computer. I like to save it as a document because I have a complicated photo editor. In the editor I can adjust the size of the image and print it in color or gray scale on plain 8.5x11 inch white paper.

Once the image is on the screen, I like to play with the size of the image. I like my felt ornaments to be roughly the size of my hand. So, I drag a corner of the image until it's the right size.

Then I print the document. Sometimes I print them in color, sometimes gray scale, it's a matter of preference and how much ink you have in your printer.

Step three: Create your felt pattern

If you've looked at ornament patterns on Pinterest, you've probably seen a lot that already have a pattern you can print out, cut, and assemble. They have limited instructions like "cut two" or "cut one" and you're left on your own to putting it together.

If you take those pattern pieces and put them together like a puzzle, you use a picture of the finished project as reference. Creating a pattern is the opposite. Look at the picture and determine which part, or parts, are the most prominent. For this Snoopy pattern his ear, arm, candy cane, and stockings should be made with the most detail.

After you have a three dimensional image in your head, you can begin to trace the individual pieces of the pattern.

Step four: Trace your pattern

This part can be tricky. If you have tracing paper, you're good to go. Just start tracing the pieces. If you don't have tracing paper, you can do what I do. Grab a piece of plain paper. Light up the back of the image you want to trace, place the clean paper on top of it, and start tracing the pattern pieces. One advantage to using regular paper over tracing paper is the pattern will be more usable over time. Tracing paper is a little thin, and expensive, for my taste.

In the beginning I would sit at our glass coffee table, set a flashlight up on the floor under my image, and trace the pattern pieces. Since then, I made a pattern tracing tool with my daughter's old Light Bright toy, which made the process so much faster and comfortable.

Step five: Develop your pattern

Now that you have the pieces of your pattern traced, determine how many pieces you will need for each part. For my Snoopy: two each of the nose, ears, arms, snoopy body, candy cane, stockings, and house. You only need one collar, two heals, and two toes because these pieces are appliqued on. Mark your quantities on each piece and cut them out.

Here is what I created using this process:

 

If you would like to see all of the ornaments I made for Christmas gifts, visit this post!

Thank you for visiting!