Craft Project: Felt Christmas Ornament

It's official, Christmas crafting is in full swing. Lots of great Christmas crafts are appearing around the web such as here, here, and here. And to officially kick off Christmas crafting on Zakka Life, I'm sharing how to make this felt sphere ornament. It was inspired by one of those paper party decorations that fold into a ball. I just took that idea, scaled it down and used felt instead of paper. Enjoy.

Supplies:
6 Felt circles - The circles I used are 4 1/2 inches in diameter. I do not recommend using anything smaller than 4 inches.
Embroidery Thread
Sewing Needle
Scissors
Ribbon 3 inches in length

Line up all six circles on top of each other. Fold ribbon in half and place in the center of the circles (three in front & three in back). Stitch down the center sewing the ribbon to the felt and at the same time sewing all six felt circles together. Refer to picture.

From a top view the ribbon should look like this. In this picture I only have two circles on each side. Your ornament should have three on each side.

Pull the edges of the first circle together. Stitch in place where you see the white circle in the picture. Make sure to conceal your knots in the inside. Click on picture for a larger view.

Pull the next circle flap on the left hand side up to the center. Stitch together where you see the white circles in the picture. This will be the pattern for the entire sphere.

Pull the next circle flap from the left hand side and stitch to the center of the last flap. Stitch where you see the white circle. Continue with this pattern(one center stitch, two top and bottom stitches) until you've created a sphere and every circle flap is attached to each other. Done.

Top view of sphere.

To make this ornament more decorative you could sew on a pearl at each place you sew the circles together. If you wanted to make the ornament more full, you could use eight circles.