Winging It!: An Ornament for the Tree

Thursday, December 19, 2013

An Ornament for the Tree

If you've followed this blog for a while, you know that every year, I include a hand-made Christmas ornament with my mailed holiday greeting cards. Nothing too fancy, something colorful and fun for the tree. Last year, it was elf mittens. This year, the ornament is an ornament! Scroll down to get the tute.

Start out with a simple shape, printed on freezer paper. The circle is 2-inches in diameter. You can download a sheet-full of shapes here.

Fuse the freezer paper to some yummy felted wool. I like this stuff from Purl Soho--the bright colors and texture of the wool felt are fabulous! For the base, I used white, but you can use any color. With the freezer paper fused to the wool, I cut out the ornament shapes.

Remove the freezer paper from the ornament base, and add some colorful strips. I rotary cut strips--some 1/4-inch. Some 3/8-in. Some 1/2-inch. Rough-cut the strips to fit across the ornament and give it a couple of whacks with a needle felting tool and mat to hold things together. . .

. . . and add a few decorative stitches with pearl cotton.

Make matching pairs.

Different colors, too! Place two matched ornament sides, wrong sides together, and button-hole-stitch them together around the edge. Stop when you've gone about three-quarters of the way around. . .

. . . and stuff in some batting scraps. I used wool batting bits, you can use batting scraps or fiberfil.

Rotary cut ornament tops--3/4-inch by 1-inch rectangles. Fold the rectangle in half . . .

. . . With a color-coordinated piece of pearl cotton, come up from the 'inside' of the fold in the middle, then pull the thread back down to the inside a couple of thread-widths way, leaving a loop, 2 or 3-inches long . . .

. . . put a knot in the loop.

Pull the knot even with the felt, and square knot the short tail with the long thread end. Trim the short thread tail. Keep the long thread end on the needle to complete the ornament top.

Re-fold the rectangle and secure it to the top of the ornament with a running stitch around the edge. Bury the thread end in the ornament middle-fluff.