Obviously I used the lensbaby to photograph this one:)

Like a lot of my recent ones, it has the ‘fractured’ or ‘piecemeal’ bits of felt making up the image, in this case a polar bear. I evidently was feeling confident,^[1] to the point of fighting with metallic thread for the name. (It helped that it was short.)

felt, braid, machine applique and embroidery, hand embroidery.

I only had to make one for 2012 (what a relief) so I had time to braid the hanger, which is a rather fun oval braid—a little more challenging than the keiruko I normally do, but quick to make up, in those nice fat yarns;)^[2]

I think it came out well. This technique works well with large simple upright shapes: note the similarity of the bear's pose to the bunny stocking.

UPDATE, 26aug15: since I'm linking to this post again for a series of pages about my 2013 oval braid series, I thought I would add the setup page for the braid:

This is a 16 strand braid (as almost all of mine are) so these fibers would have been doubled over, to make 3.5’ of working strands; with braid takeup that yields the 18–24 inches I needed for the stocking; as the braid was finished in one day, I quite likely quite braiding as soon as I had sufficient, since the yarns, like the rest of the piece, are mostly scraps/gifts/etc.

Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.