My #1 Favorite Shamrock Pattern

As St. Patrick's Day approaches, I thought it would be nice to show you an easy craft that can be used in many ways.  This felt shamrock can have 3 leaves, or 4.  You can choose to make it small, or as large as you want by following some simple steps.  

Supplies you'll need:

A sheet of green felt
Needle
Green or black thread
Scissors

Optional supplies for this tutorial:

Elastic hair tie

First, cut a strip of felt that reflects the size of shamrock you'd like to make. I'm making a hair tie, so I decided to make the shamrock leaves a little larger.

Fold that strip in half, and cut.  Once you have two pieces, fold them each in half and cut them both down the middle.  

You now have the beginning of your four leaves.  I wanted my leaves to me chunky instead of long, so I turned my blocks on the side like this.  

As you can see, I then folded the block in half.  This step is similar to how we would cut a heart out of folded paper, except we only cut the curve at the top.  

Repeat that step three more times, so that you have four leaves that look like this.  

Now to begin stitching them together.  

Start from the side facing you, and insert needle from the top side.  Weave your needle through the leaf as you see above.  You will pull through and end up with a heart shaped leaf like this one below.  

To secure this leaf, I stitched through the bottom a time or two so that it wouldn't come undone as I worked on the next leaf.  

Continue with each remaining leaf.  You can choose to make a three leaf shamrock or a four leaf shamrock.  If you'd like to stitch a narrow stem onto the shamrock you could do so at this point.  

For this project, I decided to make a hair tie for my daughter to wear to school.  I used a plain elastic hair tie, and made a simple stitch on the back of the shamrock to attach the elastic.  

She loved the way it turned out!  I think it looks nice as a large hair tie, but it would also look adorable if it was smaller.  

There you have it!  You can follow this basic design to make small shamrocks or large ones.  These would look nice strung up as garland, turned into a napkin ring, even on a wreath for your front door.  I'm planning on making some for the kids to wear to school as pins!  How would you use these easy felt shamrocks?