Felt Crowns

Kaia's much loved paper crown (as pictured here, up-side-down and backwards,) has seriously about had it. All of its sequins have fallen off, as has most of the glitter, and it's been taped more times than I can count. It was time for something a bit more durable.

I measured out three symmetrical spikes on a piece of paper. The center spike is about 2 1/2 inches tall. You could go with all sorts of fanciful shapes, which I think would be really fun to play around with. Later. :) For my first try, though, I thought I would keep it simple. I have a habit of making projects unnecessarily complicated and then never completing them, so with a 3 month old baby on my hands, (not to mention the 2 1/2 year old!) I'm trying to keep things finishable. I banished any thoughts of spires and dragons spewing flames, (for the time being!) connected my dots, and called it good.

I cut it out and tried it on the little Miss's head. I originally cut out from the tips of the spikes to the bottom of the paper, and it was just too big. I hacked off another inch or so off the bottom and tried it on her again, it was good! This only wraps to just behind her ears, the back of the crown will be made with a strip of a broken stretchy headband we have.

Once we had it right, Kaia picked out what colours of felt she wanted and I traced the paper pattern onto felt using chalk. I would have preferred fabric chalk, but sidewalk chalk was what was within reach. ;) I cut a straight edge on the brown felt for the backing. Then I cut the purple felt a little bit smaller, and used pinking shears along the top edge.

I also cut out a handful of various star and flower shapes, with little circles for the centers. I free-handed  these, but you could easily use a stencil, or even print some out.

Cut interfacing just a tad smaller than your front material and any shapes you want to put on and iron everything into place. I laid a paper towel over top of my material to protect it, especially since I am using the eco-felt made from recycled plastic bottles. I can imagine what a horrible, melty, sticky mess it could make!

I had her hold it up on her head again for me, and I measured to see how long of a strip of elastic we would need. As I mentioned before, we are using a broken stretchy headband we had kept for this purpose. I tacked that into place with fusible interfacing as well.

(If you don't have one you want to use and don't want to buy one to cut up, you can use a strip of elastic and sew a case for it instead. Measure your elastic in the same way, then cut a strip of felt a bit longer and a little over twice as wide. Simply fold in half and sew shut along the long seam. Turn it right-side-out, run your elastic through, and continue in the same manner. This is what I am planning on doing for the crown I will be making for my nephew.)

 Looking good! Now it's time to secure everything. I should have pulled out my machine for this, but that seemed like a lot of work at the time and it scares me anyway. Some day I will have a place for it to stay out and perhaps then I will be more willing to jump on it more often. As it was, I hand stitched the entire thing, which added to the length of this project considerably. Any further crowns I make I am definitely getting the machine out for. It would take a lot less time to get it out and put it away than I spent on stitching this. (Although I have to admit, I do like the look of the hand stitching...) Anyway, I went for contrast and used purple thread on the brown felt, and vice-versa.

Embellishing time! I didn't want anything too much, but I did glue a little "gem" onto the center of the front star / flower, and sewed a small cluster of little glass seed beads onto the little flowers on the sides.

(center)

(sides)

Now it's finally time to play! She's had so much fun with it already, and I'm sure it has a lot more lovin' to come. Now to finish a couple more crown and wand sets for my niece and nephew's birthdays. I'll tack their pictures on here when I complete them, and also get a post done about wands, they're too much fun!

This is how the little one passed out tonight <3