Basic Pillow Christmas Ornament Tutorial

The following is a very basic pillow Christmas Ornament tutorial designed, in particular, for beginners.

Supplies needed:

• Stitched project
• Backing fabric
• Approx 6" (15-16cm) of ribbon to coordinate with your stitching for the hanger (I normally use 7mm double-sided satin ribbon)
• Stuffing
• Sewing machine with coordinating thread to match your fabrics
• Complimentary sewing thread and needle

1. Start off by laying your stitching piece on top of your backing fabric, with wrong sides facing, as shown below:

2. Now we need to cut the fabric so that all sides are equal. The amount of margin that you leave is up to you, here you can see that I've allowed 3/4" margin on each side. I line up my ruler along the edge of my stitching, and cut the fabric with my rotary cutter (both my stitched piece and backing fabric at the same time).

 

3. You continue this same way until all four sides are cut away. Remember that your backing fabric is underneath, so you need to be careful when you are moving your stitching around on the cutting mat that the fabric doesn't move out of place or your pieces won't match at the end. Once you have finished cutting all four sides, remove the backing fabric from your stitching fabric.

4. Next I attach the piece of ribbon to my stitching - the ribbon must be attached to the right side of your stitching. Adjust the size of the loop to match your own preferences, then pin in place. I like to have a slight angle to the top of the ribbon where it is pinned in place, so that it hangs nicer when it's finished.

5. Next place your backing fabric on top of your stitching/ribbon, with right sides facing, as shown below. Pin the pieces together around the edges.

6. Now we need the sewing machine - once again, it is up to you to choose how much fabric margin you'd like to leave around the stitched piece.

It's quite hard to see the stitching threads because they match the fabric so well, so I've doctored the photo and drawn a line to show you the stitching line of where I started and finished - hopefully you can see clearly now that I have left an opening of about 1 1/2". I like to leave a long tail of the sewing thread at one end, which I don't trim off, so that I can use it for stitching up the final seam opening.

7. The next step is to trim the fabric at the seams, so they aren't as bulky when you turn the ornament inside-out. The photo on the below left is my bottom seam - some fabrics tend to fray a lot when you are trying to pull the fabric through the opening, so I've learnt to leave the bottom seam a tiny bit wider than the other three seams. The photo on the right is the usual amount that I trim back the main seams.

8. Then you should trim off each of the corners - once again, this allows you to get a crisper point on the ornament corners once you've turned it inside-out and improves the look of the ornament. Just be careful not to snip the stitching!

Your ornament should now look something like this:

9. The next bit can be a little bit nervewracking if you haven't done it before! You need to reach in and pinch a little bit of the backing fabric between your thumb and forefinger, and then slowly and gently pull the stitching and the backing fabric through the opening so it's facing the right-side out. Take your time when doing this, and just pull your fabric through little by little - it seems like it will never come through, but then all of sudden a miracle seems to happen and you have it all turned inside-out. I often enlist the aid of a chopstick to help me get the corners nice and pointy once I've finished turning my ornament inside out.

Your ornament should now look a little something like this. Of course it was at this point that I realised I'd forgotten to attach my little gold charm to this particular ornament so I had to add that quickly before finishing the next stages ... doh!

10. The final stage is to stuff your ornament with stuffing of your choice. I tend to just use polyester fibrefill from my local craft store. Once you it stuffed to your satisfaction (my preference is to fill it to a medium level - if I fill it too much it doesn't sit quite as well on my little tree), you need to thread your sewing needle with sewing thread (if you didn't leave a long tail from the seam stitching). You should use a sharp needle here, not a tapestry needle, so that you can pierce the backing fabric easily.

I use a ladder stitch to sew up the opening. As you can see from the left-hand photo below, I start off by slipping my needle into the seam of the backing fabric, then coming back out about 1/4" along the seam (about 3mm) and bring my needle out.

I then take my needle directly opposite where I just came out of the backing fabric and slip my needle into the linen and follow the seam along for about 1/4" (3mm) and bring the needle back out again.

I've left the stitches nice and loose in the photo below to help illustrate how the stitches follow along opposite each other, like rungs of a ladder.

When you pull the thread tighter, the stitches almost disappear into the fabric, giving a really nice clean finish - this is definitely my favourite stitch for closing up openings for that reason!

Once you reach the end of the seam opening, you need to finish off your thread with a couple of teeny stitches - I then bury the needle into the seam and come out somewhere about an inch way and bring the needle back out again - then clip the thread close to the fabric so that my thread tail does't appear easily.

And here's the final seam all finished off - see now nice and tidy that ladder stitch is in the opening? :D

Your ornament is now finished, and ready to hang on the tree :D

I hope you've enjoyed this tutorial, and found it useful. I would love to see any photos of ornaments you've completed using this tutorial so please do drop me a line or leave a comment with a link to your pictures :)

Christmas Ornament Tutorial

I personally don't think the Just Cross Stitch ornie magazine is very clear with their finishing instructions for 'newbies' so I thought I'd make one up myself to help people out that haven't done this type of fnishing before - and show just how simple it is :)

This will also hopefully kickstart me into preparing a few more tutorials in the upcoming months ... just need to get some stitching finished so I have some smaller things to finish! LOL. Anyway, without further ado, here's the latest tutorial - hope it will be useful to someone :)

CHRISTMAS ORNAMENT TUTORIAL

(The Prairie Schooler finishing style)

Materials needed:

• Stitched ornie
• Felt in coordinating colour
• Cardboard (I use mattboard)
• Batting
• Ribbon for hanger
• Glue
• Thread for lacing (I use crochet cotton or pearl cotton)

1. Firstly measure your stitched ornie for the size that you want the cardboard to be.

2. Next, cut out your cardboard/mattboard to the desired size. Add glue to one side of the cardboard, and place glue-side down on your batting. Even though I don't show it in the photos, I actually smooth down the glue with a little offcut of mattboard so that the glue covers the cardboard evenly - that way you don't feel ugly bumps on the front when it dries (my mattboard is black on one side, it just happened to be the piece that our local framers gave me).  If you prefer to have your ornament more padded, you can add additional layers of batting in the same way, but make sure you only use glue sparingly on the additional layers of batting.

3. Once the glue has dried, cut around the cardboard shape and cut off the excess batting.

4. Now it's time to attach the stitched piece to the padded mattboard.

Turn the stitching over so the good side is facing down - place the padded mattboard padded-side down on top of the stitching.

5. My instructions for the next part are in relation to lacing the ornie together - I've found that this gives a much cleaner finish on the front of the ornie, and in particular in the corners. If you don't want to lace, you can just use glue to stick the sides down in the same way - you'll just have to be careful that the glue doesn't dry before you have the stitched piece nicely centred on the front.
6. First of all I start by folding over the corners, then the sides. This ornie was stitched by my Mum on Aida, which is quite stiff and stays put, which is great :)

7. Next I start lacing - I usually start with a couple of little anchor stitches at the start, and use a waste knot to start with (this can be cut off later once the lacing is finished) - then you just work from one side of the ornie to the other, as you can see from the series of photos below.

8. At this point turn the stitched piece over and check that the stitching is sitting nicely centred over the mattboard. If it's not centred perfectly, just give it a little jiggle around until it is nicely centred.

9. Turn the ornie back over again, and continue to lace the remaining two sides. Now I usually stitch up the mitred corners, as this really tidies p the corners and gives nice clean points.

10. The finished version should look something like this if you've laced it according to my version.

11. You now have the choice of adding your ribbon hanger now, or at the end. I always used to add my hanger at the end, but decided to try it this way for the tutorial, and have added the ribbon prior to adding the felt backing.

Cut a piece of ribbon to your preferred length - I 'twist' my ribbon to give it a nice loop, if you just fold it in half the ribbon doesn't sit quite as nicely. Hopefully that makes sense, and you can see what I mean from the photos! Attach the ribbon with a couple of little stitches to attach it to the fabric - I prefer to stitch it rather than just gluing to ensure the ribbon hanger doesn't fall off in a hurry.

12. Next, turn your ornie over and add glue to the back - I usually use Tacky Glue and once again I use a little offcut of mattboard to spread the glue out all over the backing, but this isn't essential. I figure this will help to keep the glue stuck down for longer than just having a little bit on the edges :)

13. Now place your glued ornie down on the felt backing and ensure the felt is pressed down nice and evenly onto the glue. Then, using pinking shears, cut around the ornie shape - don't forget to hold your ribbon hanger out of the way so it's not accidentally lopped off!

14. If you prefer to add your ribbon hanger at the end, this is an example of one of my older finished ornies that I completed this way :)

15. And you now have a beautifully finished ornie - all you have to do is to hang it up on your (or a loved one's) tree! :D

I hope that's easy enough to follow - if you have any questions, don't hesitate to scream out and I'll try to answer them.

Apologies for the length of time I've been absent - just a case of work and life getting in the way, unfortunately. Hopefully it won't be quite so long before the next post!

I am a little mortified, however, as I had prepared 3 separate posts over the last 12 months for posting, with all the latest tutorials that I had found to be added to the site, and they were all sitting in Draft format and not even published ... I've now combined them all together below in one list.

Hopefully I'll be able to share some new tutorials shortly, as I aim to get some life balance back and return more wholeheartedly to my needlework endeavours in my spare time - which means more time being spent keeping this blog, and my own personal blog, up-to-date and active! That also means getting some items finish-finished so I can prepare the tutorials ... which means it's a win-win situation - more tutorials, and my finishing pile being reduced!! :D

Thanks for bearing with me in the meantime - hopefully you have still found the tutorial links useful, even without the blog being active in recent times!

Without further ado, here are the latest tutorial links that have been added to the links pages at various times recently (and not-so-recently):

• Anita - Floss Ring Tags
  
• Marjorie - Flat Ornament (canvaswork): part 1, part 2, part 3
  
• Staci - Coffee-dyeing cotton threads
  
• Lesley - 15-sided Biscornu and alternative finishing
  
• Saolya blog - Humbug chicken pincushion (in Russian)
  
• Saolya blog - Ribbon trim for pinkeep (in Russian)
  
• Saolya blog - Strawberry emery with spider web cap (in Russian) and Quaker Strawberry
  
• Saolya blog - Just Nan's Gilded Dragonfly Scissor Purse (in Russian)
  
• Saolya blog - Slipper ornament (in Russian)
  
• Saolya blog - Quaker Christmas Tree ornament (in Russian)
  
• Saolya blog - 'Folded' ornament (in Russian)
  
• Monique - Ornament with Wire Hanger
  
• Alchemy Stitchcraft - Trinket Tray
  
• Mayte - Ribbon bows (for topping pinkeeps etc)
  
• Stitch-Creations - 15-sided biscornu
  
• Swappons blog - Stitching Wallet (in French)
  
• Paper.String.Cloth - Pincushion
  

If you have any tutorial links you would like to have added to the links page, it would be appreciated if you could leave a comment or send me an email with the details, as I'm sure there are many tutorials out there that I have missed!

Kind regards,

Pillow Finishing Tutorial

Now that you have your supplies gathered, we are ready to start making a pillow!

All of these instructions are written to create an envelope style cover to put over a pillow form. However, if you only want to make a small pillow, you could leave off the large border. If you want to stuff your pillow instead of using a pillow form, you would make a one piece back and leave an opening to turn and stuff your piece. The basic principles are the same, so you should be able to modify to suit your needs. Personally, I do like to make the envelope style pillows and use a pillow form. This eliminates storing bulky pillows, and allows me to switch out the covers with the seasons.

The first thing that you need to do is draw out your dimensions. I strongly suggest that you don't skip this step if you are planning to use a pillow form! (Even though I drew mine out, I still messed up...hence the delay in getting this posted...and an unplanned extra border around the edge).

You will need to decide how big your finished pillow should be. That will drive all of the other measurements. I used 0.25" seam allowances throughout this project. I used a 14" pillow form, so the size of my front piece needed to be 14.5" x 14.5", which is the 14" finished size plus 0.25" seam allowances all around (to allow for attachment of the back panel).

Here is what my diagram looked like:

Here is how I figured out the finished sizes and cut sizes:
Section A - Stitched Design Area: My stitched design size was 4.0" x 4.0". I wanted to leave a 0.25" margin around my stitching. I allowed 4.5" x 4.5" for the design portion (4.0" stitched area + 0.25" margin on each side). The cut area needs to be 5.0" x 5.0" to allow for the above finished size, plus a 0.25" seam allowance on all sides to attach to Section B.

Section B - Narrow Border Area: I wanted to have a 1.0" border all around the stitched area. The cut size of the strips for this area needed to be 1.5", which is the 1.0" finished size, plus a 0.25" seam allowance to attach to Section A and 0.25" seam allowance to attach to Section C.

Section C - Wide Border Area: This area is flexible based upon the finished size. The total width and height of the front needs to be 14.5" as discussed earlier. This measurement includes the 0.25" seam allowance on each side to attach to the back. The finished size of this area will be 14.5" total minus 4.5" (A) minus 2.0" (B on two sides) divided by two (top, bottom) = 4.0". The cut size for the strips in this section needed to be 4.25". This is for the 4.0" size just calculated, plus 0.25" to attach to Section B. The seam allowance to attach to the back was already taken into consideration when calculating the 14.5" total size of the front.

Hopefully that all makes sense. Draw yourself a diagram, and calculate carefully. Be sure to do your finished size calculation first, and then do the cut size calculations.

Now that you have your diagram finalized, it's time to get down to work. First, we'll cut the stitched piece to the correct size. I like to do this by pulling threads to make a visible cutting line. This ensures that you are starting with a nice, straight edge. Measure 0.5" from the top edge of the stitching. The 0.5" is for the 0.25" border, plus the 0.25" seam allowance. Pull out the horizontal thread closest to 0.5".

You could also count threads rather than measuring. For example, if you stitched your piece on 28 count, you would count out 14 threads and pull out the 15th thread. Repeat all around the piece. Cut out your piece using space left by the pulled threads as a guide.

Cut your strip of fabric for Section B, using the cut size width that you calculated for this section. Don't worry about the length. When I cut my stips, I just cut the appropriate width of fabric and for the length I went from selvage to selvage. One strip was plenty.

Cut your strip of fabric for Section C, using the appropriate width that you calculated for this section. Again, cutting from selvage to selvage gave me plenty of length.

Iron your stitched piece and your strips of fabric. The good news is that the hard part is over, and we're ready to sew!

Start at the top of your stitched piece. Pin the right side of your Section B strip to the right side of your stitched piece. Cut off any excess length even with the edge of the stitched piece.

Sew a 0.25" seam. Repeat at the bottom edge of your stitched piece. Iron the seams open.

The front of your piece should look like this:

Attach the Section B strips to the sides. Iron your seams open.

The front of your piece should now look like this:

Repeat the steps to attach the Section C border. Your piece should now look like this:

Important! Measure your piece, and make sure that it is somewhat close to what you calculated. I messed mine up, because I had forgotten about the seam allowance to attach the front to the back. I had to sew a little strip all of the way around, so in the following pictures you will see an extra brown border. I wasn't thrilled about this, but it turned out okay. Now is the time to make any corrections, if you miscalculated.

Cut your back pieces. You will need two pieces. The width should be the same as your front. The length should be about 70% of your front. Hem one edge of each of the back pieces. I like to use the selvage edges for this, and fold up about an inch and sew it down. If you don't have a selvage edge to work with, you will need to do a double fold and sew it down.

Lay your front piece face up.

Lay one of your back pieces face down on top of your front piece. Line up the unfinished edge of the back piece with the top of your front piece. The hemmed edge should be towards the middle of the piece. Pin.

Lay the other back piece on top of your front piece, lining up the unfinished edge with the bottom of the front piece. Your two backing pieces will overlap. Pin.

Sew all of the way around the piece, using a 0.25" seam allowance.

Turn right side out.

Insert your pillow form into the "envelope" opening in the back. Stand back, pat yourself on the back, and admire your finished pillow!

If you have any questions, please contact me and I'll try to help :)

Supply List - Pillow Finishing

Alright, everyone! It's time to gather up your supplies for a pillow finishing frenzy this weekend. I will be posting instructions on how to do either a small pillow, or a larger pillow with a flap back that you can use with a pillow form (and swap out throughout the year).

The supplies needed are pretty basic:
Stitched piece
Poly-fill stuffing or pillow form
Sufficient fabric for finishing your piece (depends upon your desired finished size) *
Sewing thread to match your fabric

Tools needed:
Sewing machine
Rotary cutter and ruler (not essential, but it sure makes everything easier!)
Scissors
Sewing needle

* Notes on how much fabric to buy: A fat quarter is generally more than plenty to do a small pillow. For the larger pillow, you will need to measure your stitched piece and pillow form. For the front, you'll need to have enough fabric to cut 4 strips to get you to your finished size (leaving the seam allowance). You will also need enough for your back, with extra for overlap. If you have any specific questions, e-mail me and I'll try to help :)

Gather your supplies, your finished-unfinshed pieces of stitching, and get ready to have fun this weekend!