Little Joys Scrap Holiday Ornament Tutorial

Hey friends, I have a quick tutorial for you today. You might have caught a few glimpses of this fun Make & Take Project on instagram a few months back. I created these ornaments with my Little Joys fabric collection for the spring Quilt Market. Well now we’re onto the Christmas countdown (oh yea!!) and according to this this nifty clock, we have only 87 days until Christmas (insert happy dance here). So how about a fun, festive project to kick start the countdown! The Christmas season is by-far my favorite time of year! How about you?

I love this project – it’s fast, easy and a great way to use up scraps of fabric. I also want to add that this project is wide-open for your own interpretation and will look cute no matter how you sew the fabrics together. So here we go –

Project Supplies:

One 3″ wood embroidery hoop. I got mine from JoAnne’s here and with a coupon (score!).

Three or four 3 x 6″ scraps of coordinating holiday fabric. Your scraps can be narrower, wider or longer, etc. The ornaments are made in a free-form sort of way so there’s lots of flexibility here. The most important thing is that your scraps are at least 5″ long and 5″ wide (*wide when sewn together and with a 1/4″ seam allowance) to stretch across the hoop with room on all sides for glueing.

3″ circle of green or red felt for the backside.

Thread and sewing machine (or you can sew by hand)

Hot glue gun.

Optional Holly Leaf Supplies:

Green Christmas fabric.

Three red pom pom balls.

4 x 6″ Green felt for the leaves.

Thread.

Hot glue gun.

Pinking shears.

Wonder Under or your favorite fusible web.

Instructions:

1. Take at least three pieces of scrap fabric and decide how you wish to sew them together to display in your hoop. Using the hoop as a guide, place the hoop over you fabric pieces to review how the scraps will look peeking through the hoop. For example, I wanted certain illustrations to show through a few of my ornaments (Little Joys has gingerbread men, trees etc, that I wanted to show in the ornament), so I placed the fabrics together to sew them so that the features I wanted to highlight would show through. Once you decide what you want to showcase through your hoop, pin your fabrics in place and get ready to sew. Note, I pinned my fabrics in place in lines to guide me where to sew.

2. Using your sewing machine (or you can hand stitch) sew a straight stitch on those lines (backstitching at the beginning and end), removing the pins as you go. Once sewn, turn your fabrics over and check if the fabric elements you wanted to feature are in place. When you have your pieces sewn to your liking, trim the seams to 1/4″ to remove any excess fabric.

3. Pull the two pieces of the wood hoop apart and place the sewn fabrics on top of the hoop piece that does not have the metal fastener attached to it. Then place the hoop fastener piece over your fabrics and wood hoop and position into place. This will stretch your fabrics slightly making them nice and taut. When your fabrics are in perfect position, tighten the fastener to secure.

4. If you’d like to add any decorative tags, stamps or even embroider a name on the ornament, step #4 would be a great place to do that before moving on to glueing.

5. If you have a lot of excess fabric around the hoop edges, trim the edges of fabric to about 1″ around. Next, glue those 1″ edges to the backside of your hoop ornament with your glue gun (tuck them closely to the inside of the wood hoop).

6. Attach your 3″ round piece of felt over the backside of the ornament for a nice finish (covering all the exposed edges you glued down in step #5). Hang by a string and tada! This is the your ornament. Hooray!

If you’d like to add the optional holly leaves to the top of your ornament: Apply your fusible web to the wrong side of your green fabric (using the manufacturer’s recommended instructions). Next, remove the paper back from the fusible web and fuse the green fabric onto your green felt piece. Cut out two leaf shapes and trim edges with pinking shears for a fun holly leaf “look” and also to keep your leaves from fraying. Next sew a zig zag stitch (or your favorite) down the center of your leaves on the right side. Overlap your two leaves at the base (like shown in the photos) and glue in place with your glue gun. Next glue your three “berry” red balls onto the base of the leaves. Glue or pin the holly leaves in place on your ornament. I like to glue mine on the wood hoop right under the metal fastener (to hide it a bit).

 

Enjoy and I hope this brings a little holiday spirit your way! xx Elea