Felt Donuts

Felt Donut Stuffed Plush

Felt donuts... or is it doughnuts? Hm whichever one, these sweet confections are sure to satisfy your craving for a sugary treat! See my quick video tutorial and directions on how to make your own felt plush donut in this post!

​Hello there everyone, it’s been a while, I have to say that lately I’ve been in a creative blog, project, art making slump but I’m back with these awesome felt foods. This time I’m sewing again with my students and surprisingly they are really into it, it’s kind of cool seeing teenagers (yes, I teach high school now) all staying engaged and working nicely on making a felt food! We also took inspiration from Lucy Sparrow a fantastic U.K. artist who’s made thousands of felt plush projects by hand, it’s incredible, check her out!

Felt Donut Plush

So these days I’m teaching High School but it doesn’t stop me from doing fun, interactive and creative projects like this with teenage students. It does seem as if they enjoy it, don’t quote me though. Even if at the end of the day a student feels like “what’s the point of this?” or “this is dumb” or “this isn’t for me” at least I know that through these feelings they’re at least learning some fundamental skills like how to do a simple stitch, which might come in handy one day, ya never know! Plus they are learning some problem solving skills and just some basic concepts about assembling materials to achieve a final product, most of which comes incidentally. So if you’re having second thoughts about teaching felt, stuffed foods to the older kids then don’t worry, they’re going to like it a lot! Most of them anyway! Haha

Ok, so my tutorial video below was rather long so I sped it up quite a bit, it gives you a quick overview on how to make one of these donuts. There are also tons of other resources on the web for you to reference as well so feel free to add your own tricks to these kinds of projects. My friend Trixi over at colouredbuttons.com is a wiz at sewing and she has some great tutorials if you’d like to get started there on learning how to sew.

Materials:

• Felt
• Embroidery floss or thread
• Fiber filling
• Needle
• Good fabric scissors
• ​Scrap paper for patterns

Directions:

Step 1. First decide what you want to make, it doesn’t even have to be a donut, could be any food or an animal perhaps. Then create a pattern out of paper. The pattern for a donut is probably the most simple, it’s just a circle with a smaller circle in the middle. Use the donut pattern to help you make a separate pattern for the frosting. I also suggest avoiding small or narrow details when designing your felt plush, they’re difficult to work with.

Step 2. I like to staple my patterns to the felt so they don’t move while I’m cutting them out, you of course can use pins to keep your pattern in place if you have them. Pins are not an option for me in the classroom, a staple or two works fine and they barely effect the felt.

Step 3. Be sure you have the correct number of layers! So for the donut I need two layers of the cream colored felt, these two layers get stitiched together and the fiber filling goes in between. You also need a layer of felt for the frosting which gets stitiched to the top layer of cream colored felt first.

Step 4. Stitch on sprinkles in several different colors using the running stitich. Don’t forget to stitch on the frosting as well along the edges.

Step 5. Stitch the two layers of cream colored felt around the perimeter using the blanket stitch, it’s much more secure and visually it looks nicer.

Step 6. Stuff your donut with fiber filling before stitching the donut closed, then complete the stitching to seal the opening.

Enjoy making your felt foods, I hope you make lots of fun desserts! Remember to share your ideas and creations with me here at The Art Dream!

Felt Plush Donuts