Countdown to Christmas Tree

This tree was one of the most ambitious projects I made last year (with some help from Jeanne!) I participated in a Christmas ornament exchange. I decided to make a Countdown to Christmas Tree (advent calendar). I combined several ideas I found on Pinterest, and came up with this adorable decoration.

This is the finished product:

I started with all my supplies at the ready. I found the face patterns online and adapted them for my needs.

I used two different white felts. The plain felt was used for the back of the snowmen's heads. The sparkly felt was used for their faces. We cut 25 circles of each.

Using the face patterns as inspiration, I drew a unique face onto each sparkly circle. I then embroidered the faces using perle coton #8. On the head backs, we wrote the numbers from 1 to 25 in green sharpie.

I didn't have black perle coton in my stash, so I used this blue instead to sew heads together. We then cut 25 hats out of black felt using this paper pattern as our guide. We also cut 25 carrot noses out of orange felt. The noses were glued in place.

I used a cookie cutter to transfer the two star shapes onto some yellow felt for the top of the tree. I sewed the front of the star to the back with a buttonhole stitch, leaving the bottom open. Then I lightly stuffed the star. The star sits atop the tree with the point of the tree in the bottom of the star.

Once all the faces were embroidered, we aligned the faces to the backs, making sure that the top of the face was aligned with the top of the number. Using a buttonhole stitch, we sewed the face to the back, leaving a small opening at the top. We stuffed the snowmen with some fiberfill, then closed the opening while at the same time sewing on the hats. That was a little tricky, because we needed to hide the knot between the hat and the snowman's face.

Then we had to figure out how to attach the snowmen to the tree. That was trickier than I'd anticipated. We bought the sparkly tabletop tree at the dollar store. It was basically a wire form covered with a red garland. I ended up devising a thread loop with a very small homemade hook.

I started by threading approx. six inch piece of crochet cotton through the top of the hat.

I tied it in a small loop and cut off the extra.

Then using some 18 gauge wire, I fashioned a hook. I cut a two or three inch piece of wire.

I made a small loop on one end with the tip of some round-nosed pliers, placing the thread loop onto the wire before closing the wire loop.

Then, using the larger portion of the round-nosed pliers, I bent the other end of the wire into a very short hook.

Then I clipped off the extra wire. The finished hook was only an inch or less. I needed to keep it really short so that all the snowman heads would fit on the tree.

Here are all the happy little faces!

No two are the same.

The size, shape and placement of the noses and the jaunty angles of the hats put their personalities over the top!

Here is the tree with all the snowmen facing out ... the way you'd see it on Christmas morning.

Here's the tree with all the numbers facing out, the way you'd start it on December 1st. Notice that  we did not hang the ornaments in order. I wanted the snowmen to be turned over in a more random manner.

Merry Christmas!

Pinterest was the key to my inspiration. My Countdown to Christmas tree is a combination of this simple tree:

And this ornament kit:

And these faces: