Christmas Ornament Tutorial!

Ok, this is my first tutorial, so be gentle with me, dear readers!

My most recent project has been these fun and easy handmade Christmas ornaments! As I’ve said before, I’m normally a knitter, but I have carpal tunnel and sometimes I have to take a break from the knitting. My hands like to be busy though so I decided I needed a simple sewing project. I also needed some easy but cute gifts to give as last minute gifts and to people I don’t know well but am still expected to give a gift to. Extended family, family friends, etc…

I would say this project is definitely beginner friendly! I am not very good when it comes to sewing. I tend to lack the patience for the exact measurements needed for many sewing projects so I like to keep it simple. So I’m short on technical terms here but it’s all pretty easy! So lets get started, shall we?

Lets start with what you’ll need:

• Whatever fabric catches your eye
• A sewing needle
• Some thread that works with your fabric
• Some buttons (I scavenged mine from some clothing that couldn’t be saved. I like them kinda random)
• Scissors
• A marker (I used a sharpie, not pictured)
• Ribbon, string, or twine
• Some fiber fill or whatever you like to stuff things with

And off we go

Remember how I said I’m not so good with the exact measurements? I turned my fabric over on the back side and folded it in half. Then I drew the pattern on the back side of one half of my folded fabric.

Remember how I said I’m not so good with the exact measurements? I turned my fabric over on the back side and folded it in half. Then I drew the pattern on the back side of one half of my folded fabric.

Then, holding the fabric together (you could pin it first to keep everything in place but I just hold them together) I cut out the shape I’d drawn on my fabric. I used a fine point sharpie. You can use whatever you are comfortable drawing on your fabric with. I knew my pen marks would be hidden by the time I was done so I wasn’t worried about it, I’m a little devil may care with my sewing.

You could also draw your pattern a little bigger than you intend it to be and cut just inside your lines thus eliminating them completely.

For reference, my trees are right around 3 inches tall from trunk to tip and 2 ½ inches wide at the widest part 

So, now I have two Christmas tree shapes and some scraps. For this one I tried using my scraps to stuff my tree, it wasn’t quite enough and in the future I will stick with fiber fill but if you have enough scraps, it’s a nice way to use every part of your fabric. Plus, if you’re lazy like me, it’s less clean up!

Now we begin sewing. I used a blanket stitch but you could use just about any stitch you’re comfortable with. I imagine you could make a ton of these if you used a sewing machine but sewing machines and I never got along and they don’t give me the busy, happy hands feeling I get from hand sewing things. What’s nice about these is that I wanted them to look handmade and a little rustic so if your stitches are a little uneven it just adds to that affect!

I should also mention that you could straight pin your pieces together before you start sewing but for something this small, I didn’t bother. Lol I usually end up stabbing myself with the straight pins so I use them as little as possible.

Since I used a wider piece of ribbon, I had to switch to your average run of the mill stitch for the apex of the tree. This is where the button comes in handy later. The button, or your tree topper, if you will, helps distract from the fact that stitch changes.

To add the ribbon I slid it between the two pieces of fabric. I placed it down just far enough so that the corners of the ribbon were hidden within the body of the tree. You can just hold it in place but I found it much easier to just put a pin in it. Everything stays in place and your fingers don’t have to worry about holding onto the ribbon as well. 

So continue stitching everything closed. On the second side of the tree I stitched a little more and then with about an inch opening left, I stuffed my tree. You’ll want to make sure you stuff the trunk of the tree and make sure some filling gets into the tip of the tree so it’s not floppy. I used the end of a knitting needle to get the filling into the small spaces but you could use just about anything, the end of a pen, or your fingers if they aren’t all pudgy like mine.

Once stuffed, finish sewing up the side and you’re almost done! Sew a button tree topper on each side of your tree so it looks good from all angles and you’re done!

Merry Christmas

Author: Sweet Von Pea (AKA Meagan Ingerman)

Me: A Collage

I know, I know, it’s been a while since I last posted. Life has been a bit busy and there has been some bad news but today I finally go around to photographing a project I wanted to share.

Up until the other day I was doing  a ton of knitting so I have a good amount of knitting pictures and some new projects that I need to take pictures with but today I want to share another non knitting related project. I had fun showing off my door display in the last post so I thought I’d finally take this baby down off the shelf and get some good pics of it while the lighting is good.

I guess it was the spring before last that I took an art history class. I was just working on some general ed credits. It fit my schedule and more importantly, it was at the extension campus in my town so I could walk there instead of taking the two busses it takes to get to the main campus!

Anywho, along with a journaly type thing that I kinda half assed, the major semester project was a collage piece that represented our lives or an important aspect of our lives. You know how it goes with artists, you aim for one thing and sorta see how it comes out in the wash.

When I was very young, my dad taught me to sew by drawing a picture on a piece of fabric and telling me to follow the line with the needle. I can now do some more practical sewing, mending seams, replacing buttons, sewing together pieces for a project, etc… But one of the things I still get great joy from is this amateur sort of embroidering.

So, I bought a piece of foam board, mapped out some randomly sized squares and rectangles in pencil and got to work. At first I tried just following the line but it turns out foam board is a somewhat different animal than fabric.

In sewing on the trim I realized that I needed to pre-poke the holes in order to get the needle through…then I realized I needed to put some thought into where I poked the holes if I wanted a design and not a mess. I gave myself about 2 weeks to finish this bad boy and know now that it’s more like a month long project…especially since I was working , babysitting, and going to school at the time.

Anywho, I would sit for hours just poking holes with a straight pin along the lines I’d mapped out. That took forever, but it was the easy part. I then had to decide what the heck I was going to put on this thing!

In the daycare I worked in, I’d been going through magazines collecting images for the kids to use for their own collages. Collages were my professor’s main focus this semester so it kinda blend into other aspects of my life. So I went through the images I’d cut out for the kids and selected some of those, printed some pictures off the internet, printed out some of my own photographs and filled in with some embroidery on the board itself and some small embroidery projects I’d done in the past and a couple I did specifically for this project.

This post will be more picture heavy than usual but I’m very proud of this thing. Lol, I’m an artist in my own way but I don’t draw, stick figures tend to give me trouble. So I felt good when the other art students in my class ooed and ahhed over my project. It seems kind of silly but those little bits of validation can make a big difference for one’s ego.

 

The back is one of my favorite parts. the front is neatly arranged the way we try to present ourselves to the world and the back...like the inside of my head, is chaos.

"Would You Like to Swing on a Star, Carry Moonbeams Home in a Jar..."

So you may recall that in the beginning it mentioned that this was supposed to be a craft blog. Not just knitting but all my crafty pursuits. These days most of my crafting involves knitting but I do put my energies towards other projects from time to time.
By each doorway in my dad’s apartment building there is a little ledge. It would probably be more practical to use it to rest groceries or mail and the like while unlocking the door but most use it for flowers and seasonal displays.
My dad and I have had a good time setting up all sorts of little tableaus with things like green army men toys and action figures. My dad’s apartment building is actually rent controlled for seniors, I think it’s 55 and over. After a while we noticed that some of the stuff we used to disappearing or getting moved around by kids coming to visit their grandparents and in some cases, grown ups who never learned to keep their hands to themselves. So we had stopped creating displays for a while but recently we decided it was time to put up something new.
To that end, I present the final frontier! Complete with aliens and space ships and glitter glue! I had a fabulous time putting this one together. I am always excited to play with glitter and glitter glue!