Christmas Sew-a-Long: Improv Embroidered Ornament
The Little Christmas Sew-a-Long features weekly holiday tutorials from some of my favorite quilty designers! This week we have Paige from Ponderosa Creative showing us how to make a super fun ornament that combines a bunch of skills - improv quilting, embroidery, and beading! Paige is a woman of all trades - she dyes fabric, creates beautiful pouches and other gear, and makes the most AMAZING thread gloss. Oh, and my logo? Yeah, she made that too. Read on, and make sure to check out her etsy shop which is currently featuring a 40% off sale (Yeah, you read that right) for black friday!
I’m in the camp that believes that Christmas shouldn’t be polished and fancy-- Christmas is a time for dorky handmade, odd-looking cookies, newspaper wrapping paper, macaroni kid art, popcorn garlands, and the ugliest decorations possible. My tree is covered in the weirdest, kitschiest sewn ornaments-- Christmas is a time to laugh and not take a single thing seriously.
Enter this dorky ornament-- a chance to let loose and just make something super odd that will make you smile every time you see it. I love mid-century anti-christmas color palettes, lots of coral and teal mixed with mismatched metallic accents. So, I decided to raid my scrap bin and make an improv-pieced, beaded, and embroidered little tree ornament. If you want to have a fun and silly gift, here’s a tutorial for you! This tutorial involves improv-piecing, beading, embroidery, template making, and stuffing.
You’ll need:
-- about a fat quarter worth of coordinating scraps
--assorted beads
--sewing machine + your usual sewing notions
-- pillow stuffing
--12wt thread for beading
--various embroidery flosses, coordinating with your scraps
-- a few inches of scrap ribbon
--9 inch embroidery hoop
1) Go through your scrap bin, and find about a fat quarter’s worth of scraps that you would like to use.
2) Iron and starch all of these scraps. I like to work with heavily starched fabric when improv-piecing, so that nothing gets weird when sewing on the bias. Once these are ironed, lay them all out to envision how to piece them together.
3) Start sewing-- if pieces fit together, sew them together, ironing after each seam before sewing on another piece. Once you have a slab, cut the edges and then add on in a different direction. Keep expanding outward-- this is improv piecing.
4) Once you have attached all your scraps together, it’s time to take a break from sewing and assemble your template. On a piece of cardboard, draw a 7” line. On either end of the bottom of the 7” line, create a perpendicular 3.5” line. This will create a T. Next, use your ruler to connect the arms of the T to the other end of the 7” line, forming a symmetrical triangle. Cut out your template. Don’t use your fabric scissors or rotary blade, thank me later.
5) Next, trace your template onto your improv-pieced slab. It doesn’t matter what kind of pen you use, because it will be eaten in the seam allowance, and it’s super unlikely that you’re going to do anything to make the ink run.
6) After tracing your template onto the fabric (twice, for the front and back), DO NOT CUT OUT THE TRIANGLES. Instead, put the fabric into an embroidery hoop. Center the hoop on one of the triangles.
7) Ready your beads, embroidery floss, 12wt thread, and ponderosa thread gloss. Start with the beads-- coat a length of your 12wt thread with the gloss, and start sewing the beads to the fabric wherever you’d like. Make sure to leave a half inch around all the edges of the traced triangle, so you don’t sew over any beads. Repeat with as many kinds or colors of beads as you want.
8) Next, coat a length of embroidery thread with ponderosa thread gloss, especially if you are using metallic thread. Randomly place stitches among the beaded bits, in as many kinds of floss or colors of floss you want, in any kind of stitch you want. I made a confetti effect with just some simple back stitches and seed stitches, but I think some little x’s or +’s or even tiny stars would be super cute. I recommend only stitching/beading onto one side of the ornament, so that nothing gets tangled during the process of turning the fabric after sewing the front and back together.
9) Once you’re done stitching and beading and all that, take your improv-pieced slab out of the hoop and cut out the templates.
10) Take your length of ribbon, and secure to the top of the triangle.
11) Place your triangles right sides together, and sew with a hefty ¼-½ seam allowance around the perimeter. Leave a gap at the bottom of the triangle, only big enough to pull the fabric through, and backstitch at the beginning and end. Make sure not to catch any beads, or the ribbon in the seam. Once sewn, trim the points so that the corners aren’t bulky.
12) Turn your sewn ornament right side out, using a chopstick or other rounded point to push out the corners as crisp as possible without busting the seam.
13) Gently stuff the ornament with pillow stuffing. I found mine at a local thrift store (along with most of my supplies). Focus on the corners first, and you can use your chopstick or whatever corner-turning to push the fluff into the corners. You probably can fit more stuffing than you think. Keep going until it’s nice and awkwardly floofy, but still able to close.
14) Pin the opening at the bottom closed, so that you can sew it shut. You can use a blind stitch here by hand, or you can machine stitch closed. If machine sewing, make sure to close the gap completely.
I would love to see someone make a whole set of these! Tag your pictures with #littlechristmassewalong!