The christmas ornament I made for this year's ornament swap was the first one I've ever made.. and the bug has bitten! I'm hooked!
Here's the one that started it all..
The gold is hard to see in the picture, but it's super sparkley - it's actually gold thread from the sewing department in walmart. I live in a teeny tiny town with no needlework shops, so I improvised with the best I could find. I had to stitch it doubled up and stitch each leg twice so that it's actually 4 strands (stitchind with 4 strands at once was impossible though, which is why I stitched each leg twice). I sewed him up into a little pillow ornament and as much as I wanted to hang onto him, I had to send him off.
Once he was gone, I wanted more! I've been working on my HAED all year and got hooked on the fast little finish.. so I pulled out a scrap of 14 count aida and made this guy..
I haven't gotten around to finishing him yet, as I'm not sure how I want to. The aida feels too stiff to turn after sewing into a pillow.
At this point I realized that I needed christmas gifts for everyone in my roommate's family, as I spend christmas eve with all of them. I struggle to come up with gifts each year, as I only see them all once or twice a year, so I decided ornaments are perfect - so I started stitching more.
This guy showed up first...
The original pattern had red french knots in the tree for the ornaments, but I decided to bling it up a bit by adding beads. This is the piece where I fell in love with what backstitch can do to finish off a piece. The pattern states to use 1 strand of floss for the backstitch, but that was barely visible, so I tried two and saw an instant improvement. so that's what I'll be doing from now on.
Next I wanted something a bit more delicate.. so did this:
I had to tweak the pattern a bit on this one. It is designed to be stitched over 2, and was designed for the center line to go into the middle of several squares. Since I stitched it over 1 to size it down to be suitable as an ornament, I had to rechart the entire center part of it as well as a few other areas. I'm very happy with how it ended up though!
Next came this guy..
He's a small little thing that still needs to be finished up. I decided to add a little bling to the snowflakes in the background by adding a strand of Krenik BF to the floss. The stitching was easy peasy though, that was a quickie done in an evening of watching Netflix
Right now I'm working on this guy:
He will most likely go to a friend who LOOKS like Santa. I mean really really looks like Santa. Starting about the middle of December he wears a Santa hat all the time, and everywhere he goes, kids' eyes get really wide. I'm hoping to finish him off today, as I still have a few more to make and I need to step it up here.
While looking for patterns to make these I came across so many that I absolutely loved - some of which to be honest, are entirely too much work for me to make and give away, so I've decided to start sewing ornaments for myself year round. I've set myself a goal of one ornament a month, to start to build up a collection of ornaments of my own. So since I'll be stitching christmas year round, I figured I'd use one thread to keep track of it all.
