Gnome Snack Mats

I love crafting with felt!

The creative possibilities are endless when you get going with it *grin*. In the winter edition of Rhythm of the Home is an article on making snack mats and I just fell in love with the idea of a special little mat for each child to enjoy a snack on :) So out came my giant stash of felt and linen fabrics and I set to work cutting out little Tomten.

Applique is sort of like a jigsaw puzzle as your fit your pieces together, overlapping edges, stitching them together...

and watching the images appear :)

The original pattern called for a 7 x 9 inch square of linen but I decided to make it slightly larger at 8 x 10 inches because my tree and gnomes were a little bit larger than I had anticipated *grin*. Another thing that I did differently was that I stitched all of my felt pieces onto one single layer of linen so that all of my stitch work on the backside would be nicely hidden inside the layers of the mat and not visible on the backside of my finished mat like in the pattern. I just thought it looked tidier that way if someone happened to flip it over to check it out as all of the little stitched pieces made for quite a jumble :)

I just love how they turned out!
So far I have just finished these two but I have one more boy gnome cut out and ready to be sewn and then I will have one for each of the children. I just know they are going to go crazy over them :)

Hugs,
Rosina

Looking for more crafty ideas or inspiration? Pop over to Natural Suburbia's Creative Friday and see what others are up to :)