Felt Crown

I'd been planning on making Hazel a felt crown for her birthday party, and had several tutorials and posts on making them bookmarked when my friend Rebeccah asked if I could make her son Alexander one for his first birthday. At first I was all "oh no! pipped at the post in the cool crafty mum" stakes but then I cunningly realised it was the perfect opportunity to practice making one first :)

I mostly used the great tutorial and pattern at Balancing Everything, along with the tutorials and pictures at Woodcraft, Juicybits and Koala brains with a few modifications of my own. I think Rebeccah's decision to use red as the accent colour was inspired, I just love how all the colours work together.




Unfortunately all we had to work with was the wool blend felt, which compressed like crazy when ironed, so the crown lacks thickness. I ended up with with two layers at the tips, and three at the bottom. I did the embroidery and the zig-zags through two layers of felt (small and large pieces) and then backed both with another large piece and attached the ribbon at the bottom for stability. The points have a tendency to get bent, but an iron will straighten them out easily. I'm sure nice thick pure wool would be soooo much better!




I extended the sides back a bit on the Balancing Everything pattern and I like the curved effect, although I obviously needed to bring it down a bit narrower to match the width of the elastic I used.