Simple Pillow Christmas Ornament

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?

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

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

(the way Prairie Schooler finishes them)

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)

The following piccies are all clickable for closer views …

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.

3. Once the glue has dried, cut around the cardboard shape and cut off the excess batting (my mattboard is black on one side, it just happened to be the piece that our local framers gave me).

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, but here I used a waste-away knot first (this will be cut off later) – 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!

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.

Our new home is ready for occupation!! Focus on Finishing is moving to Blogger…

Hi everyone – it’s been a while since I announced the idea of moving the Focus on Finishing blog to the more popular Blogger platform. That idea has finally come to fruition, and the new site is ready to have all the posts copied over. Here is a preview of the new look:

Anyway, I hope you will enjoy the new home … I, for one, am quite thrilled with the clean, fresh new look of the blog (it’s been fun spending a few hours tweaking the HTML codes!). The new link is:

FOCUS ON FINISHING
(http://focusonfinishing.blogspot.com)

It would be wonderful if you would be willing to post photos of any items you have finished using our tutor’s classes, or any other finishing methods you would like to share. If there is enough interest, I would also be happy to reopen the idea of having a weekend set aside each month to focus on finishing our projects languishing in the finishing pile.

Please update your bookmarks so you don’t miss any new posts – these existing pages, however, will still be kept open as I will continue to maintain the classes schedule etc via WordPress as I find that easier.

Unfortunately each WP post has to be copied over individually into Blogger, so it is going to be a long and arduous task to copy over the old posts and classes, but they will gradually be added over time.

Thanks for your continued support of this blog

Kind regards,

A Needle Case for your needle packets

Who doesn’t need a special something to hold their needle packets?  Since I use a lot of different types of needles in my embroidery, I like to keep them in their packets.  I’ve made a needle case to organize my packets that will help me find the needles I need easily.

To make the needle case, you’ll need:

• your finished embroidery, 12 inches long by 6 inches wide
• light weight cotton for the lining, 27 inches long by 6 inches wide
• #12 perle cotton
• a small length of ribbon
• 2 pieces of skirtex or light weight cardboard, 5-1/2 inches by 5 inches each
• a hot iron

I stitched a stumpwork design for my needle case but the finishing instructions will work for surface and counted embroidery, including cross stitch and crazy quilting. 

Click here for the needle case instructions (pdf)

I hope you will enjoy making your own needle case and will find this tutorial useful.  If you have any questions or need clarification on any of the steps, leave a comment here and I will try to answer in this section for everyone’s benefit.

Stawberry fob finishing

Hello all,

I’m running a bit late this month but have finally cobbled together some photos and text for Strawberry fob finishing.

First gather your equipment…

For this project you will need:

• Stitched project – some suggestions: Prairie Schooler chart 100 – American Strawberries & chart 101- Prairie Strawberries (used for this tutorial), Anita’s little Stitches designs, Blackbird Designs – there is a strawberry fob in the Secret Garden pattern (OOP) from the Loose Feathers series of 2006 and a Blackbird Designs also designed a fabulous quaker strawberry for the 2006 Annual Just Cross Stitch Christmas Ornaments issue (I’m sure this one is still available).
• Interfacing
• Ribbon, felt
• Stuffing
• Scissors, needle, thread, pins.
• Iron

And you can see in this photo, I also made sure I had a cup of tea to work with.

Take your stitched piece and iron a piece of interfacing to the reverse of the stitching.

Make a semi-circle template, pin to the stitching and cut around. You can see I have mucked up centering this up with the “quiltish” strawberry above – this is not really a problem for this finishing technique.

Next, finger-press a small seam along the straight edge. Make this seam as close to the stitching as possible.

Fold the semi-circle to form a cone (see above). Stitch the straight seams together. I like to use a ladder stitch to do this, but you can use a sewing machine if you wish (I find it is easier to do this by hand).

I kinda hoped you’d be able to see the ladder stitch in this photo. If you pull it nice and tight it disappears into the seam. I’m pretty pleased with the join for this strawberry.

If you used the ladder stitch to join the seam, secure the thread and then run a gathering stitch around the top of the cone around 1/2 an inch from the top.

Draw the gathers together a little and stuff your strawberry – I’ve used hobbyfill.

Draw the gathers tighter and run a few stitches across the “opening” and pull these tight to secure your thread. You can insert a hanger at this point if you wish, stitch through it as you secure your thread.

For my first strawberry, I’ve attached a felt cap. I cut the felt out using the template in the pattern (Prairie Schooler pattern 101: Prairie Strawberries) and tacked it to the strawberry.

Next, I stitched around the felt using a buttonhole stitch – making sure I caught the linen beneath. Then I attached the second felt star (template from the prairie schooler pattern) using buttonhole stitch.

Attach a hanger to the top. I made a loop of ribbon and secured with tiny tacking stitches and slipped a bead over the ribbon to hide the stitches.

Another pretty way to finish the strawberry is to tie ribbons around the hanger – I learned this technique from Janie Hubble from The Cat’s Whiskers Design Studio at a class last year.

Here’s the other design I stitched from Prairie Strawberries by Prairie Schooler. You can see in the photo I have gathered the top and inserted the hanger. I’ve cut a length of ribbon and tied it in a bow around the hanger. Just keep tying bows around the hanger – pushing them down towards the strawberry. Have them facing in different directions.

When you are satisfied with the ribbons, trim the ends and you are done.

Here are the two finished strawberries. I love them! – So cute!
I hope you will enjoy making your own strawberries too and will find this tutorial useful.
Cathy.

Treat Bag Tutorial

Here is the wonderful Treat Bag Tutorial put together by Celeste – I think you’ll all agree that it’s a real stunner, and the instructions put together are superb! 

Due to the difficulties of learning to use the WordPress platform, and to allow us to get this published on time, this tutorial has been prepared in a .pdf format.  Hopefully I can work out myself how to get this file attached here so you can download it!

As always, please feel free to leave any questions and/or feedback in the comments section of this post.

Enjoy!

Treat Bag Tutorial instructions are here (please click for .pdf).

Blog announcement

This is just a quick post to let everyone know that I have decided to move this blog over to the Blogger platform shortly.  While my own personal preference is for WordPress, most tutors are more comfortable with the Blogger platform for posting, as well as most users so it is the logical step to allow further interaction and ease of posting for the majority of bloggers.

It will take me a while to fix up the new home (it’s a bit of a ‘doer-upper’ at the moment), and transfer all the previous posts over, but once that is done I will make a final announcement here along with links to the ‘new’ site.  Unfortunately Blogger don’t have “page tabs”, which I particularly love, so I intend to keep the WP pages active in this blog with links to those pages from the new Blogger blog.  As I am the only person to update these pages, this will be much simpler and less time consuming for me.

Thanks in advance for your patience during this transition phase.  I look forward to breathing some new life into the blog and making a few more regular posts soon!

Kind regards,
Anne S

Tuck Pillow Tutorial

Welcome to our tuck pillow tutorial. This tutorial will be for a 7″ flat door hanger tuck pillow but you can make yours any size you like. Smaller tuck pillows are good for Christmas ornaments. To recap, following is a list of what you need to make the pillow.

• your stitched piece
• main fabric for pillow – a fat quarter will be plenty
• neutral fabric for back of opening – a scrap piece the size of your pillow. I use calico/quilters muslin/homespun or whatever it’s called in your country.
• fusible fleece wadding – the width of your pillow. I use fusible fleece on my pillows as I prefer the finish it gives to the back of the pillow. You can, of course, use any batting you prefer. Something not too thick is best.
• cord for hanging
• sewing machine
• thread

 

Cut 1 piece of main fabric 7½” by 7½” for the back

Cut 1 piece of neutral fabric the same size

Cut 1 piece of fusible fleece the same size

Cut 4 strips of main fabric 7½” by 2½”

 

 

 

Fuse the fleece onto the wrong side of the main fabric piece – this piece will form the back of the pillow. I always use a pressing cloth for this step. If you are using a non-fusible batting, pin the batting to the wrong side of the main fabric piece & sew using a ¼” seam. Now treat this piece as one.

 

 

 

Fold the 4 strips of main fabric lengthwise, wrong sides together. Press.

 

 

 

Place 2 of the strips onto the top and bottom of the right side of the back pillow piece, raw edges together (the folded edge will be in the middle) & pin.

 

 

Place the other 2 strips on the sides of the right side of the main piece & pin. Do not sew yet!

 

 

At this time, you will add your hanger. First of all you need to ascertain which edge is the top of your pillow (this is only crucial if your pillow is rectangular or the fabric strips/main fabric have a one way design). Pin your cording piece between the strips and the main fabric piece making sure the cording loop is in the middle of the pillow, NOT poking out through the seam – the ends WILL be poking out of the seam and will be trimmed later (see pic for clarification).

 

Now sew all these pieces together using a ¼” seam. To ensure the cording stays put, you can backstitch over this part or sew that part of the seam again to reinforce it.

 

 

Place the neutral fabric and main pillow piece right sides together with the strips sandwiched in the middle and pin.

 

Now sew these seams using a ¼” seam, leaving an opening for turning. Trim the seams, corners & cording.

 

 

Now turn the pillow right side out and VOILA, your very own tuck pillow!

 

 

 

You may, if you wish, whip stitch the opening (which will now be situated inside the pillow) closed. However, I usually just leave it as no one can see it. Give the pillow a good press to make it nice and flat.

 

 

Now you can add your finished cross-stitch piece which, hopefully, will fit into the opening. You can secure it with buttons at the corners or just leave it. I find that the stitched piece doesn’t move much unless the cat gets at it & gives it a bat!

 

Calculating other sizes of pillows

 

To calculate a different pillow size, all you need to do is measure your finished cross stitch piece and add 1½” to all sides. That measurement will be your main fabric and batting size and strip length. The width of the strips will be 2½”.

Keep in mind that the larger you make your pillow, the wider the strips should be. This, in turn, will also affect the size of the opening so double check that your stitched piece will fit!

 

 

 

Tuck Pillow Tutorial

Next weekend will be our tutorial on making tuck pillows.  Tuck pillows are very versatile. They can be stuffed like a pillow or left flat. They can be used for Christmas ornaments and hung on a tree, or used as a door hanger. This tuck pillow tutorial will be for a flat door hanger about 7″ square. Instructions to calculate other sizes will be included in the tutorial.

You will need:

• Your stitched piece (duh!)
• Fabric for your pillow – a fat quarter should be plenty unless you’re making something bigger than 9″
• Scrap of neutral fabric for the back of the opening – calico, muslin, homespun
• Fusible fleece wadding – same size as your pillow. You can use a non-fusible batting if you prefer. Something not too thick is best.
• Cord for hanging
• Sewing Machine
• Thread/scissors etc

I’ll be back next weekend with the tutorial!

Book Cover Tutorial

Hello everyone! I hope you’ve got the items ready. Here’s a recap:

You will need the following items:

1. A stitched piece, size ½” to 1” allowance around the front of your book or a part of it if you prefer.
2. Some coordinating fabric for the side, back and inside flap of the book.
3. Muslin or calico for the backing
4. Book to cover
5. Matching sewing threads
6. Ribbons to tie (optional)

Instructions for a particular step will be at the bottom of the picture (if any).

Step 1

Determine the size of your stitched piece that will cover the book and pull one thread from each side of the stitched piece. This will help to ensure the lines that you machine sew are straight. The stitched piece can cover the front of the book or partially or cover the front and back of the book. It’s up to you. In my example the stitched piece covers the front of the book partially.

Step 2

Measure and cut the length and width that you will need to cut from the co-coordinating fabric. Wrap from the left edge (where one thread was pulled) to the back of the book. Add necessary seam allowances on all sides. Machine sew the coordinating fabric and the stitched piece. Iron open the seam.

Step 3

Cut 2 additional pieces of the coordinating fabric about ½ the width of your book, add necessary seam allowances. Machine sew one edge of both the flaps after measuring and ironing a double seam.

Step 4

Cut the backing fabric the same size as the cover piece.

Step 5

Sewing them all together. Lay the cover piece right sides up. Place the flaps, wrong side up on the both sides of the cover piece with the stitched edge towards the middle. Pin accordingly.

Step 6

Place the backing fabric wrong side up and again pin accordingly.

Step 7

Machine sew from the top of the back portion of covered piece, about and inch before the flap starts. Backstitch a couple of stitches to fasten the beginning. Proceed to sew up all 4 sides but leave about a 3” opening for turning. Again backstitch when you end.

Step 8

Trim all sides to 1/4″ and cut the corners to reduce bulk.

Step 9

Turn the cover inside out. It’ll be a mess but nothing that cannot be ironed out

Step 10

Stitch by hand to close the opening with matching thread.

Step 11

Give it a good ironing. Insert the book covers into the flap and there you have it your very own book cover!

Optional embellishments:

• Add a piece each of rick-rack, lace or ribbon on the sewn edge of the book flaps

• Add two long strips each of ribbon at mid point of the right and left edge of the book for a ribbon tie closure

• Add a small loop of ribbon/cord on the front side edge of the book and a larger loop at the back. Slip the larger loop into the smaller loop creating a closure that you can wrap around your wrist

• Add a ribbon/cord for bookmark where the opening was and stitch by hand or securely by machine.

• And anything else you can think of!

Samples of book covers:

• Appliqued book cover with ribbon closure
• Patchwork book cover

If you have any questions please feel free to comment here and I will answer them in the comment section itself so as to centralise the Q&A for everyone’s benefit.

Thank you all for joining our tutorial this weekend. Pictures are always welcomed