Royal Felt Crown

by Ginny at Small Things
                   Tutorial - This is a great crown for either a boy or girl when playing dress-up.

You will need two pieces of wool felt, approximately 17 inches wide by 4 inches tall each, and a piece of one inch elastic, about five inches long.  I bought this gold wool blend felt at JoAnn.  I like that it is sold by the yard, making it possible to get the necessary dimensions without spending a fortune.

Start by downloading and printing my royal crown template, or draw your own.  Cut out the template.  Fold one of the pieces of felt in half and trace the template making sure to place the side labeled "fold" on the folded edge.

Carefully cut out the traced crown front.

Open it up; it should look like this.

Now lay the cut out crown front on top of the other piece of felt and pin it in place. (if your felt pieces were cut nice and evenly you would have cut out the crown front along the bottom edge of the first piece of felt, and then lined up that bottom edge with the bottom edge of your second piece to save yourself from cutting there, but mine weren't.)

Attach the crown front to the crown back, by sewing along the bottom edge as close to the edge as you can (edgestitch.)

Next sew around the crown points, leaving the sides open.  Start at the point where I am holding the marker and head around the points.

This part is a bit slow and tedious, you have to use the needle down function and make lots of turns.

It doesn't have to be perfect!

Once you attach to crown front to the crown back it will look like this on each end, and it is time to cut the back out, by cutting it out around the crown front.  (I find this easier than cutting out both pieces and then attaching them together.)

I cut the whole thing out with my regular scissors, minus the little bits between the points.  It is easier to use a small pair of scissors to cut out that portion.  My little thread snippers are the only small scissors I have, so I used them to cut out the bit of felt between each point.

Now the crown is ready for elastic.  Use your recipents head or a measurement of it to determine how long your elastic needs to be.

Insert the elastic about one inch inside the opening on the first side, pin it if necessary, and then sew the opening closed, catching the elastic as you go.

Now do the second side the same as the first.

I went back and forth across the elastic portion a couple of times to hold it securely and as you can see I wasn't particularly neat about doing so.

Now it's time to try the crown on the lucky child whom you have made it for.