Gnome or Tomten Ornaments for Your Tree

If your background is Scandinavian, they are Tomten elves.  If not, you can just call them gnomes.  I made several of these yesterday to put on my tree and to give away.  Must say they were really fast and fun to make (other than burning my fingers a bit...)

Here's how I made them.  

Supplies needed:

2 pieces of felt about 5” x 8” each for hat front and back~your choice of colors

Small amount of fake fur fabric for beard

Small pom poms for nose and top of the hat

Sewing machine, thread to match color of hat

Hot glue gun.

Scotch tape or painter’s tape

Ribbon to make a hanger

1.      Print and cut out the hat shape. (pattern below) If your printer shows the shape to be about half the width of the paper in landscape view, it’s about the right size. Either increase or decrease the pattern as needed.  Mine is 7” high by 4 “ wide.

2.     Lay the paper shape on your felt and draw around it. Do this on each piece of felt but cut out the back piece and leave the front piece  for now. (Makes it easier to sew the two pieces together.  Your pen markings won't show.)

3.     Embroider a snowflake or other design by hand or machine onto the front hat piece.  I did the snowflake by machine, but a name or the year would be cute either by machine or by hand.

4.     Onto the front hat, tape a 8” ribbon loop down out of the way of the seam but the ends included in the seam. Lay the cut out back hat piece onto the front hat piece. Pin around so it matches perfectly.   Sew around with a straight stitch using about a 1/8” seam leaving the bottom open.

5.     Cut out the front piece to match the back, trim and clip corners. Turn right side out. I didn’t, but you can stuff lightly with polyfil. Remove tape.

6.     Cut a piece of fur the width of the hat and as long as you want it. Glue onto the hat front (across, bottom and sides.) The dotted line can serve as a guide for placement.  Fold in the felt hat bottom and either glue or sew shut by hand.

7.     Glue nose pom pom and tip of hat pom pom.   DONE!

PS I got my miniature pom poms at a fabric store in the craft department.  You may want more of a flesh colored nose, but these colors were what I had on hand.  For the white one, I rolled up a piece of fur and glued it into a ball shape for the tip of the hat. As I mentioned, I burned my fingers a bit…   we do suffer for our art…sigh. So be careful if you are using the glue gun.

Here's my white one.  It was so cold where he lives that his nose turned blue!!!

I tried to do the whole thing with my embroidery machine, in the hoop as they say.  All went well until I tried to attach the beard.  The foot just wouldn't go across the thick fur and got caught.  Hence this method by hand with the glue gun was born.  Still fast.

Hope you enjoy!