I finally got around to pre-shrinking the flannel for the easy quilt, so while I couldn’t work on that, I tried my hand at making a gnome.
My first few attempts were all wrong – using crochet cotton didn’t work out, it took several patterns before I got the hat the way I liked it. Here is a tutorial of how I did it, which may or may not help you make one of your own.
One thing I have a lot of is leftovers from many projects. As my sister said, she wasn’t the one with 50 years of fabric hoarding. Everything I used, I had already. The bead was a recent purchase for a wind chime repair.
I found a base I could wind the yarn around. I counted 100 rounds. I wanted to know in case I wanted to increase or decrease, but I like it so I’ll keep it at 100. The lid is 3 1/2 inches on each side.
I cut the yarn along the bottom of the tin lid and laid the yarn out straight. I used a crochet hook to feed a length of yarn through the 1 inch wooden bead. I placed it on top of the yarn at the center, then flipped it over, and tied a knot.
I could adjust the yarn so that it covered the bead completely, and I trimmed the ends.
I used a round lid to start the pattern for the hat. I drew about 1/3 of the lid but I made the peak to be quite a bit longer. I used scraps, tried it out, tried again, and tried again. You can make it the way you want it to look. I wonder if you can find Santa hats this size, wouldn’t that be fun? Use felt or fleece if you don’t want to sew. I used my serger to sew the seam up the back and hid the blue ribbon near the top so I had the hanger for the ornament already installed. Of course, turn it right side out. I trimmed the bottom edge so it wasn’t as low as it came out to be.
I glued the hat all around.
I had leftover (surprise!) sweatshirt pieces from this pumpkin project a year ago. It’s fuzzy on the wrong side, so I used that for the cuff of the hat. I cut a length of it but twice as wide as I wanted. I glued it together with the fuzzy side out, then glued it to the gnome hat.
I was looking through my buttons for a black nose, and just for a hoot I put the green one there that I found. I had to have it! I think this is the cutest thing I’ve done!
The glue I use is Aleene’s Tacky Glue. I keep it upside down in a small pickle jar so the glue is always at the tip. That alone saves me a lot of time. Of course, you can use E6000 or hot glue, or whatever you use in your crafting.
I happened to have some KC Chiefs fabric so I fussy-cut to have the arrowhead in the front of the hat. I’m sure someone needs to have these.
Merry Christmas!
Quilt in Progress 