Plush House Ornament with Tutorial

Some good friends of ours just got engaged AND they bought a house and move in on April 1st. They have a thing for Christmas tree ornaments, so I decided to make them a little congratulations gift for their engagement and their new house by making them a little plush house... ornament :)

I had the idea the other night when I went to bed, and layed awake making a list in my head and designing the house and how I would make it and put it together in my head. (my brain never sleeps it seems.) The next morning I started working on it. I don't have a pattern to share since it's just a bunch of squares/rectangles with a couple triangles, but I did take a lot of pictures along the way to give you an idea of what I did so I could present a half-tutorial for anyone that might want to make one for themselves :)

Plush House Tutorial

First I cut out the pieces - no bottoms or tops for the square that made up the shape of the house nor the rectangle that made up the garage:
Every little item like the bushes, fireplace, window and door was cut by hand from felt and carefully handsewed on. No machine on this one! It's way too small and intricate for my personal sewing machine abilities, anyway. I'm digging the handmade look that the showing stitches give it, though.

I formed the roofs and then started putting the walls together:

Once I had made the walls and sewn the roofs to the walls, it finally started to look like a house. But as you can see in this pic, it wasn't holding its nice square angles very well, so I made a miniature cardboard version of the house to insert inside. It's important to note that even though the cardboard model looks like the house and garage are connected, they're not, and I inserted them separately.

Once the sturdy cardboard inserts were in, I stuffed it with polyfil and then traced on a piece of cardboard the shape of the full bottom. (instead of a separate bottom for both the house and garage.) Theoretically this shape would just be one of the squares that made up the house and the longer rectangular side. I also cut a felt piece of the same shape to form the final bottom:

I sandwiched the cardboard between the bottom of the freshly-stuffed house and the white bottom felt piece and sewed up around the entire bottom edge:

Voila! I forgot to mention that just before I inserted the cardboard supports in the house that I used embroidery floss to make the hanging loop, and knotted it well inside so it'd not come out. I chose a spot in the roof that was somewhat centered as far as the entire final piece goes so it'd hang as evenly as possible.

And that's it! This is a really basic house - if you use your imagination you could make many more squares and rectangles and make your house much bigger and more complex. It's all up to you! I hope that our friends like it! :) The cardboard inserts and polyfil really makes it sturdy and hold its shape well. I'm really happy with it!