I have been thinking about what holiday decorations that I wanted to make for the Fourth Quarter Challenge. I wanted to do something simple and decided to try creating an ornament with prefelt. I don’t usually use prefelt in creating my designs so I thought I would give it a try. I decided on a snowman design.

I had commercial prefelt in white and black but none in red. So I created a piece of red prefelt as the first step from mixed 56’s hand dyed fiber.

Next I needed a circle of red prefelt from the background. I wanted my finished ornament to be around 5″ diameter so I used this approximately 7″ container to cut around. I used a craft blade and essentially just scored around the container and then finished cutting the circle out with scissors.

I had enough red prefelt for 7 circles. I hadn’t really planned on making multiples but what the heck, I might else well make more, right?

Next I cut out two circles in white prefelt, two black hat shapes and a black circle to go behind the red circle. I decided that my red prefelt wasn’t going to be heavy enough with just one layer. I used black instead of white because I like a deeper red better than I like a pink. I didn’t have enough red prefelt for two layers. Now on to felting.

I had hoped with two layers of white prefelt that I wouldn’t get a lot of fiber migration. No such luck. I did shave a bit off the surface of the white so it wouldn’t look so hairy and that helped. I only felted this one just to see how it would come out. Next time, I think I will cover with a light plastic to try and prevent any movement of red and black fibers into the white. This one was rubbed with my hand so I think that I got a bit of movement of fiber as well as migration through.

Now on to more decoration. I stitched a small piece of sari ribbon on to the hat for a band. The sari ribbon adds a bit of shine. Then I hand stitched the facial features. Now I have to decide if the ornament needs further backing, if it needs an edging treatment and how to hang it. What would you suggest?