Tomato Patootie

Roll a small portion of the natural wool batting into a ball and start felting. Move it around as you poke to create a sphere. As your sphere takes shape it will also shrink so wrap a little more wool around it to make it bigger till you get to a size you’re happy with**. It shouldn’t be any bigger than 2 1/2 inches wide or the height of the needle.

It’s not a perfect ball - I like to make my tomatoes a little wide and short

**Make sure you leave enough batting to use for the buttcheeks.

Adding the cheeks

Pull off 2 small pieces of core batting to roll into smaller ball shapes. Carefully poke each to loosely form a sphere.

Place the cheeks one at a time where you want them on the big tomato body side by side. Attach one cheek on first, and place the other next to it and poke that one into place.

Once both are secured to the body you can start shaping by poking more as you go. They’ll start to shrink as they get more solid so you can add more batting if you like your patooties more hefty.

Time to add color

Pull off a flat layer of red wool to wrap around the core. You shouldn’t be able to see through the red but it also shouldn’t be a super thick layer. Felt it onto the core and add bits as you go to cover up any bare spots. Be sure not to jab too hard around the cheeks so you don’t accidentally flatten them.

Leaves

Pull off at least 3 small portions of green wool for the leaves. Roll one up and felt it into a flat, leaf shape. Each time it’s flat pick it up, flip it over and felt on that side. Make sure you can’t see through it. If you can, add a little bit more wool.

As the leaves take shape, PUT ON YOUR FINGER COVERS, pick up a leaf and, holding it between your thumb and forefinger, start shaping the sides or edges of the leaf.

Stem

Same as the leaf, roll up a small bit of the wool into a tube shape. Instead of felting it flat this time keep poking and moving it so you’re felting it into a stick shape. When it has a nice stem-like structure, start tapering one end (careful to leave the wool a little loose on this end) and flattening the other (use the finger glove method where you hold it and poke at it carefully).

Attaching

Arrange the leaves how you want them to sit on top of your tomato. Felt each one into the center point, layering them a little. No need to go to hard or deep yet.

Place the stem in the center and start attaching the loose, tapered end into the leaves. Poke your needle into the stem’s body to secure the fibers as well. When you have to put a little bit of effort into pulling the stems off or you can hold it up without the tomato dropping, you’ll know it’s attached,

Eyes

gather two small clumps of black wool and felt them into loose circles of the same size. Figure out where you want to place them on the tomato’s face then start felt them into place. You can shape the eyes as you felt using the needle and maneuvering the wool into whatever eye shape you like.

Mouth

With the leftover black wool, make the mouth shape however you want. For this example I made a regular smile where I pulled and stretched out some of the black yarn, felted the center of the mouth where I want the smile to start and felt the thin string of wool into place.