craft whatever: {Tutorial} Advent Calendar, a Felt Wall Hanging

If you stopped by yesterday, I showed you my Advent Calendar that I made last year. And then I promised you a "how-to" for it today. Well, I rounded up some pictures I took while I was making it and collaged them to give you a quick tutorial.

I promise you, I just whipped this up. On the 30th of November. I finished all but assembling the ornaments, to include the hand sewing of the numbers. But by the 5th it was complete.

{Tutorial by Pictorial} Advent Calendar- Felt Wall Hanging

To make this I used: fabric for the background, felt, interfacing, heat and bond, scrapbooking brads, rick rack, and embroidery thread.

1. Grab some supplies. 2. Decide on a size for the tree and base everything else off that. 3. Cut two felt trees; light and dark green. 4. Cut each in 3 pieces- take into account 1" of overlap when you plan your cuts. Or not and just wing it! 5. Attach the thirds, bottom edges overlap. You will only use three pieces of trees here. I cut strips of Heat and Bond to attach them. 6. Decide where you want your brads to go. 7. Poke brads through the felt. 8. I thought it could use some garland (rick rack). 9. Again, I used tiny strips of heat and bond to hold in place. Then sew down the rick rack.

10. Lay out tree on background fabric and mark your lines for the ornaments to hang on the bottom. 11. Sew some trim (rick rack) along the horizontal lines. 12. It's probably safe to attach the tree now! I cut pieces of Heat and Bond to hold it in place. 12. Then sew the felt tree to the background. 13. Add brads to the horizontal rows. 14. Make a backing piece and line with a medium to stiff interfacing. 13. Sew backing to the front panel. I did 3-rows of stitching to be "decorative". 15. Make a casing at the top for a dowel to slide in. 16. Make some felt ornaments. 25 to be exact!

It isn't too too late to start this. You can get the tree part done pretty fast. Then just make the ornaments.