Christmas Craftiness - Gift Edition

Yesterday I posted some of the decorations around the church so today I thought I would post some of the gifts that I made for Christmas this year.  I'm only going to post the ones for kids since I know they won't see this post and ruin the surprise.

This past year I finished two needlepoint stockings.  One for my youngest niece:

And one for my oldest godson:

Last year I found online a tutorial to make a felted potato person (though a different name was used).  Due to copyright infringement, that post has been deleted but a few pictures are still out there and I was able to figure out how to make them.  I made three potato people, for my two youngest nephews and a friend's daughter.

My tutorial in a nutshell:

• Make a lump shape on a piece tan/brown felt, cut it out and sew pieces of Velcro in the appropriate places.  
• On a second lump shape of tan felt, make a pouch
• Take two rectangles (one twice as tall as the other) of the same color felt and attach a piece of Velcro to the center edge of each piece
• Sew three sides of the large rectangle to lump shape felt (you can fold in the sides to make a pleated pouch) with velcro facing out
• Sew the top of the smaller rectangle to the lump above the large rectangle where the Velcro meets.
• Put good sides of lump together, sew around edges leaving a two inch opening.  Flip right side out, stuff and close.
• Using scrapes of felt, cut hats, eyes, arms, mouths, noses and ears as you like.  
• Sew piece of Velcro to back of the back. 
• Sew any embellishments to front before sewing the front and back pieces together. (i.e. for the eyes, sew the pupils on the front white piece before sewing front white and back white piece together)
• Sew front and back pieces together by sewing around the edges with right sides out.  Leave a small opening to stuff, then sew shut.  
• One hint I will pass on is Velcro now makes a version of it's product were the hook and latches are on the same piece so everything attaches to everything else.  If you go with the traditional two piece Velcro, sew all the latches onto the lump and all the hooks onto the accessories.  

I also made two other large gifts for people and some ornaments.  I will post pictures after Christmas as to keep the surprise for any friends or relatives who might read this post.