Christmas Sew-a-Long: Fussy Cut Nutcrackers

Nov 22

The Little Christmas Sew-a-Long will feature weekly holiday tutorials from some of my favorite quilty designers! This project was inspired by the “Joyful” collection from Beth Schneider for Hawthorn Supply Co.

So many fabrics just scream out to be fussy cut, but I’m not sure if I’ve ever met one more perfect than this nutcracker pattern! As soon as I saw it I knew it was destined to be turned into a new child-friendly ornament set.

The Joyful collection also has this adorable ornament print that would be perfect for this project as well!

Screen Shot 2019-11-20 at 7.44.04 PM.png

You’ll need:

A small amount of yardage in whatever material you want to use. I wanted to get five different nutcrackers out of my material to start with, though I’ll probably just back in and make more!
A similar amount of backing fabric for each of your ornaments
Metallic embroidery floss, beads, ribbon, or whatever else you’d like to use to embellish your ornaments
Polyfill Stuffing

1. Using a water soluable or diappearing marker, draw ovals around the objects you want to cut out. It’s easy to skip this step and just cut, but your results will be better if you do it! I purposefully made mine different shapes for some variation.

2. Lay each of your cut out shapes on the backing fabric. Draw around each of them and cut along the lines.

3. To create my hangers, I tied a knot in a piece of embroidery thread. You can do the same with ribbon if you’d prefer. Lay your hanger carefully along the backing fabric, with the knot above where your seam will be.

4. Then, lay your top piece right side down on top of the backing and hanger.

5) Carefully and slowly stitch around the perimeter of the ornament, starting halfway up a long side and leaving about an inch unsewn (so you can turn it right side out).