It is that time of year again….yep, cold, dark and maddening…time to stress-craft! This year’s project is elephants.

White Elephant Felt Ornament Embroidery
White Elephant Felt Ornament Embroidery – Hand made Christmas Ornament


Last year I started making dog ornaments for our usual wacky Christmas gifts for the family. The kids picked out silhouettes of dogs of all breeds that we cut out of felt, blanket-stitched around the edges, then added little tiny hats and scarves. They were so cute!! I thought for sure felt dog ornaments would launch my full-time Pinterest career as a millionaire Pinner, but alas one year later and I have only 14 re-pins of “Felt Dog Ornaments – Golden Retriever.” Anyway, the dog ornaments were fun to make and we added an entire pack to our Christmas tree. That was my first foray into hand stitching since I was 7, and I’m afraid blanket-stitch ended up being my gateway stitch into embroidery. I fell into it, loved it and got hooked! I spent the summer taking pictures of the local Washington state and King County noxious weeds to embroider (that’s for another post), but the short days and cold, rainy Seattle weather has pushed me into felt early. Hence the elephants….. (Side note: did you know elephants are a very popular tattoo motif? I had no idea, but when searching for elephant inspirations there is a lot of skin and ink out there…some very cool, some regrets….)

The prototypes are in the pic. I’m debating whether to add eyes and ears, or just keep the silhouette with the embroidery as the showpiece. Let me know your thoughts.