Simple Felt Crown Tutorial!

Carrying on from my Why we Celebrate Birthdays like we do post I thought I would share how we make VERY VERY simple felt Birthday crowns.

A I said in my birthday post this was a transition from the gold cardboard crown we started with and since at that time their were no real tutorials on crown making like there are now. I simply transferred the traditional style of paper crown making to our felt one.

I know there is such a wide variety of tutorials available now on the net.
These are some of my person  favourites. Ginny's one, also Frontier Dreams has  a great tutorial and of course  Soule Mama all have beautiful felt crowns.

I really wanted to make some like these for the children. My problem was that when I suggested making a special crown for each child like the ones above that we re-use each year I was greeted with wails of despair.
The children wanted a new one each year like the ones we had always done.
So while I personally adore the beautiful ones above, our children wanted to continue with the tradition we already had in place.

Being a  lover of tradition and the memories they hold, of course it made more sense to honour what  our children wanted.

A quick word about felt. Although I do really love the natural wool felt. I find that we just can't afford to use it for all our felt  projects, so I do use the commercial, non natural felt for the crowns as well.
It doesn't detract from the love the children have for them but does ease the cost involved.
Which when considering how many I make a year can be considerable.

So for anyone who is interested in simple, reasonably quick felt crowns, with lots of decorating options. Here is my version of how we make them~

1. Measure the child's head around and cut the felt to size. It can be in one long strip or have 2 strips that can be joined together. The width can be what ever you like and depending on how much decoration you wish to apply can be adjusted as you like. Mine vary all the time as I really am an 'eye  it in sewer'

2. Select the thread you wan to use. Sometimes I blend sometimes I contrast. I use embroidery thread, because that is what I already own. Sometimes I only use 2 threads and sometime the whole 6 threads.

3. Then I buttonhole/blanket stitch the pieces together.
This is the way I do it:
Make a knot in the end of your cotton and attach on the inside of the piece of fabric facing you.
Then take the needle to the back of the far away piece and  push  the needle through both pieces of fabric.
Before coming all the way through loop the thread underneath  the needle and then continue through.
Pull tight and repeat the process.

4. Work along the pieces until finished.

5. Two crowns stitched up. The green one is one long piece of felt and the orange is joined in two places.

6. I then decorate with many differing items.
Sometimes I paint on to the felt with acrylic paint or if I have any (our children have used this up on me) proper fabric paint. But really the acrylic works fine.
I sometimes glue sequins or flowers or anything that can be glued on with a glue gun. I prefer a glue gun because it is fast drying but craft glue work just as well, it takes longer to dry though.

7. Jewels glued on front and back. This is a very simple crown without much decoration  as it is for Stephen.

8. These are just craft shapes with a sticky back. So I just peeled  the  back of and placed them on. Too simple!!!!!

9. I don't know the proper terms for  these but they are readily available at K-Mart etc.

10. Another simple crown.
Mostly I do more elaborate ones but you get the idea.

11. A view from the back. You can see the seam I sewed up.

This is one I painted with simple flowers in acrylic paint.

Needless to say the children use their crown in play for many  different games.
Kings and queens, fairies, princesses etc.

I hope this has been useful to some of you and also to show that you really can make very simple things very quickly and without too much skill level ♥

Blessings to you and your homes,