Feather Stitching

Christmas Ornaments, Cross Stitch, Finishing, Tutorials

New Christmas Ornament tutorial for beginners

7 August, 201029 November, 2021 Anne S

Following is a tutorial that I’ve just completed for the Focus on Finishing blog … I started this before my sewing machine went bust the last time, but finally completed the finishing a few weekends ago, and now the actual tutorial is done and dusted! 😀

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

Supplies needed:

Stitched project (if you want to you can also iron on some light interfacing to the back of the stitching to add some strength and stability as well as giving a smoother finish
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 first photo below 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 second photo 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! I usually give the ornament a quick run over with an iron at this point to remove most of the creases caused by turning inside out.

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’ve stuffed it 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 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 🙂

Canvaswork, Christmas Ornaments, Cross Stitch, Finishes, Jens Jems, Paw Printings, Photo Hunt, PhotoHunt

Penguin Hugs & Photo Hunt

7 August, 20106 April, 2014 Anne S

Here’s my latest stitching finish that I’ve been working on during this week – I put the final stitches into it last night while Katie and I watched the last episodes of Dark Angel (great series, shame it got axed at that point after the 2nd season). This design is supposed to have all the white stitches overlaid with a half-cross of blending filament … I managed to do the snow beneath the penguin’s feet, then got totally fed up with it (I truly detest BF), so I didn’t bother doing the BF in the border – I think it still looks alright to me that way 🙂 (The fabric looks kinda grey in this photo, but it is a lovely light blue in real life.)

“Penguin Hugs” by Paw Printings
from 2004 Just Cross Stitch Christmas Ornament issue
stitched on 32ct hand-dyed Lugana
with recommended DMC

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PhotoHunt | PhotoHunt

This week’s theme is ”Colourful”.

Uncategorized

Today is a better day

7 August, 201025 February, 2012 Anne S

Sorry about my rant yesterday, but oh boy did it feel good afterwards!!! Yesterday morning we had a meeting to discuss next week’s plans with my colleagues and bosses, and I tried to put forward my feedback in a constructive manner. The one thing they know about me is that I will openly address issues I’ve got once it starts to affect me, but then once it’s been voiced I move on and it’s generally put behind me.

The male boss (“M”) I was referring to wasn’t too thrilled with it regardless, because I guess the feedback was directed at his handling of the situation – plus he feels that the rest of us put too much effort into testing and that he feels it’s not required in such detail – he feels that the test cases provided by our developers are sufficient to test from. My new (female) boss (“W”) stood up for me in some of my feedback in particular in regard to testing, but I know that she struggles with M and they often clash in meetings with differing opinions I’ve been told … W (the lady) is much too polite to discuss those things openly herself and doesn’t play politics, which I really admire about her. Anyway, I said I would review the developers’ test plans and see if I could flesh them out to suit our needs to save me some work … and had great pleasure in providing M feedback at the end of the day, that “BTW, M, there are no test plans whatsoever provided for X and Y parts of my project” – his response, “well, how have they been able to sign off for functional testing?” … well, that’s the million dollar question isn’t it? And yet again it has been proven that we can’t rely on those test cases (which has been my argument for over 12 months now) – but M likes to take the easy way out, and take shortcuts and not put the hard work in himself … and unfortunately the guys in the sites hate him for it. He’s got the worst reputation in the sites – he’s a lovely enough man outside work (still arrogant, but that’s easier to cope with outside work), but his work manner is arrogant and overbearing and I’ve learnt the hard way this year that he does take the credit for everything, and likes to dominate any meetings and/or decisions regardless of whether he is provided with data to prove that his solution is inaccurate or just plain wrong. Unfortunately many of his projects go out in a less-than-perfect state and the sites get angry.

The new guy who just joined the team last week has already made a comment to me that M really likes to take over meetings and is overly assertive. Personally I just think he’s stubborn and bloody-minded, egotistical and arrogant. I had to laugh inwardly the other week when he offered to be my work mentor … while I politely thanked him for his offer and changed the subject …

Funnily enough, we had a team training meeting yesterday afternoon (without the bosses) and my other colleagues all started talking about M and how arrogant and overbearing he is, and that they can’t stand him … especially how he sits in meetings leaning back in his chair with his hands behind his head, with a non-verbal display of arrogant dominance and aggression. I have to admit I was a bit surprised by the vehemence of their attitude towards him, though. I’ve heard other people call him incompetent and useless, but didn’t quite realise how far-reaching this antagonism towards him went … I can normally tune out my frustrations with him (until I lost the plot on here in my last post!), but now I’m realising his impact on others a lot more …

Unfortunately it’s all this sort of rubbish that is making me lose my enthusiasm for the job … I find I am ‘numbing myself’ every day to try not to be affected by all the environmental crap that goes on, but that is tiring in itself …

Anyway, enough of my gripes about work …

I’m about to do a Photo Hunt post with a piccie of my latest stitching finish … then it’s time to start putting my fingers to the keyboard in Excel and start writing up these test plans, I guess …

Uncategorized

Blogger comments

3 August, 201025 February, 2012 Anne S

I’ve been trying to catch up on a few blogs over the weekend, but keep getting error responses when trying to add comments – it appears from the help forum that this is a known issue, and multiple of reports of it happening. Not sure when the issue will be resolved, and I’ll be able to comment again – I’ll keep trying, as every now and then a comment does get through, it’s just frustrating typing everything then losing it all to the ether 😦

Cross Stitch, Quaker, Queensland, Scenic Sunday, Travel - Australia, Works in Progress

Quaker Update & Scenic Sunday

1 August, 201025 February, 2012 Anne S

Just a quick drive-by with a Quaker Huswif update – Katie has her Mum and sister staying with us this weekend, so I joined them in the lounge last night for a pizza and DVD night … which meant a couple of hours of stitching time for me 🙂

Oh so close now to finishing off this section – just that tiny bit of border left to go, then I can roll it up to start stitching on the final two quaker sections – over the halfway mark now, with 60% completed woohoo! Have to admit I’m really LOVING stitching on this one – I’m not normally a huge fan of Vikki Clayton silks, but this Premium floss is really great to stitch with one strand on 40ct fabric … an absolute dream! So much so that I’m considering getting some more for future projects … once I’ve stitched some more of my existing stash first LOL 😀

Now I’m about to wander across the road for a decent bucket of cappuccino and maybe some lunch ‘cos my tummy’s rumbling and I don’t have much food in the house! Then when I get back home again I need to get my head back into work mode and pick up my project work documentation again for work – if all goes well, and I can get everything pretty much finished today, then tomorrow I may just have to go into the office to finish off a couple of screen shots that I didn’t bring home with me from the reservations system, and email the document off to all the key stakeholders so they have time to review and finalise by the end of next week. While normally I’d be brassed off having to work during the long weekend, I have to admit I’ve really enjoyed working on it – and it’s been so much easier to concentrate at home!

And just because I haven’t done one for a while, here’s a Scenic Sunday post to finish off the day … from the coastal drive between Cairns and Port Douglas, Queensland.

Cross Stitch, Edfu, Exchanges, Freebies, Nadi, Photo Hunt, PhotoHunt, pincushions, scissor fobs, Stitching Smalls, Travel - Egypt, Travel - Fiji

NZ Exchange

31 July, 20106 April, 2014 Anne S

I have absolutely nothing to show stitching WIP-wise this week, as I’ve been clocking some mental hours at work, with a few 12 hour days. My new all-time record was a 16 1/2 hour day yesterday – 12 of them in the office, then I came home and did the remainder at home, finishing at 1.30am this morning. I still have enough work to keep me going for one more entire day, but I thought I’d take a break for a bit – although I have a major deadline looming, so I have to do it over the weekend to get it finished in time for review on Tuesday morning (it’s a long weekend here in Sydney this weekend).

Seeing as I don’t have any WIP updates, I thought I’d go ahead and post the exchange I posted off last week. I haven’t heard that it’s arrived, but it should be there by now 🙂

You will remember that I shared the ‘back sides” last week, well here are the fronts. I was very sad to see these ones leave home … I think I just may have to repeat this exchange all for myself – love, love, love the colours – I just hope my recipient likes it too!

Freebie from My Aunt’s Attic
Stitched on 32ct white Belfast linen
with DMC 4030 thread
(homemade tassel & cord also in DMC 4030 thread)

Freebie by Le Petit Monde de Vavi
Stitched on 32ct white Belfast linen
with DMC 4030 thread

And seeing as I have nothing else to share today, I’ll end with this week’s Photo Hunt, as I ran out of pre-published posts last week and have to think of this one from scratch. Alas, no future themes are out yet either, so I guess next week’s will be from scratch too…

PhotoHunt | PhotoHunt

This week’s theme is ”Public” and I went with the following dictionary definition:

“Definition:Open to common or general use; as, a public road; a public house.”

In saying that, here are my choices for this week … Here I am waiting for a bus at the public bus depot in Nadi … during a flood (and no, I have no expectation that a bus will really arrive!).

Or perhaps a public road at Edfu markets, Egypt…

Christmas Ornaments, Cross Stitch, Exchanges, Finishes, Hardanger, Just Nan, Periwinkle Promises, pillows, pincushions, scissor fobs, Stitching Smalls, Works in Progress

Exchanges, WIPs and Finishes

25 July, 201025 February, 2012 Anne S

In my overflowing mailbox this week I received an exquisite exchange from Elaine in NZ (this was an exchange hosted by the StitchNZ Yahoo Group). I’m absolutely thrilled with this exchange – I really adore hardanger, although I still haven’t kicked myself in the pants enough to get back into it myself again … and this one is just gorgeous! Elaine made it into a stitching pocket so I can hold my needlework tools and supplies – and sent along a matching wee pincushion (so gorgeous!) and packet of needles. I’ve taken loads of photos so you can share in the beautiful stitching detail of this piece – while photos never do stitching real justice, I’m sure you can imagine that the finished piece is even more exquisite! Thanks Elaine for a wonderful exchange! 😀

My exchange piece unfortunately left a little bit late (actually a whole week late, ahem!) … thanks to not being able to get to the Post Office. As I’m pretty positive the recipient doesn’t read my blog, but perhaps I’d better play it safe and not post details about it yet … I’ll tempt you with a photo of the ‘backside’ in the meantime, and will post more when it’s received 🙂

What’s next??? Oh yes, yesterday I sat in the lounge with Katie watching Dark Angel DVDs, and doing a teeny bit of finishing – I managed to get the Christmas Ornament tutorial photos completed (very basic ornie) which also means one more ornament off the finishing pile, my Just Nan Ladybug Santa is now in its little Whimzi frame, and I completed the Periwinkle Promises January Sampler Accent into its little pillow, complete with little corner tassels (I ran out of silk for the backing fabric/joining, but luckily had a skein or two in my stash that I was grab to finish this one off).

As for my WIPs themselves, I’ve done very very little stitching over the last week or so – I managed to put a handful of beads into Chatelaine’s Egyptian Garden Mandala (3 nights of beading and I’m still not even halfway finished the one band of beads – the row on the edge of the lotus flowers) – it doesn’t help that the beads don’t sit nicely with that poxy fabric that I’m using, so I’m having to squeeze the beads in and offset them every 6 or 7 beads:

Then yesterday I managed to complete some more of the border of the Quaker Huswif, and am now working on the bottom quaker band. Once this section is finished, I’ll be flipping the design upside down and unrolling the scrollbars to work on the final two sections at the other end – I think at this point in time I’m pretty much sitting on the halfway mark of this piece 🙂

And that’s pretty much it for now … not sure what I’ll be stitching on this week, if anything … I’ve got some big deadlines at work over the next fortnight, so I may be putting in some longer hours, which means less mental/physical energy for stitching …

Cross Stitch, Gifts TO BE FIXED, Stash

A week of highs and lows

25 July, 201025 February, 2012 Anne S

Starting with the lowlight of the week … 😦

I was incredibly saddened this week to learn that an old colleague from Auckland passed away this week – every time I go home and visit my old workplace I always make sure I stop by and have a chat. He was made redundant from his job a number of months ago, which saddened me, but the news this week was really devastating. The world is an emptier place without you, Toni – I will always remember you fondly and with love, and will miss your beautiful smile and wicked sense of humour … Rest in Peace my friend xxx

This photo of Toni (in the top left with the blue shirt on) is from our last Christmas party before I moved to Australia to work, and that beautiful smiling face is how I’ll always remember him in my mind 🙂

Moving on to the highs of the week … all pretty much postage related! I haven’t had chance to pick up parcels from my PO Box for a couple of weeks or so now – I did one pick-up the day after I returned from sick leave a few weeks ago, and haven’t done it since! To say my mailbox was overflowing is an understatement!

I’ll start with the best stuff … I received friendship gifts from two of my close online pals, and I love, love, love everything! 😀 I’ll show them in order of when they would have arrived, had I managed to get to the PO Box sooner…

First up is this wonderful gift from Margaret in NZ, the founder of StitchNZ Yahoo Group, and a dear online friend. I agree with you Margaret, that I too hope we will get to meet F2F one day! Margaret treated me with a chart from my wishlist (LHN’s Spot of Coffee), pearl cottons threads in scrumptious colours (oh so me!), and a gorgeous piece of fabric that I’m already matching up with an overdyed thread from my stash in some future stitching plans 🙂 Thanks again Margaret for my parcel of goodies – I love love love everything! 😀

Next up is another wonderful gift, this time from my “northern twin” Jenna in the US. Jenna was one of the first online pals that I “clicked with”, and remains one of my dearest friends online. When I stitched my turquoise and purple biscornu a couple of years ago, in my mind it was ‘me and Jenna’ in that biscornu, as that’s the blend of our two favourite colours. And to prove just which colour was MY favourite, see if you can guess from the scrumptiousness of this photo! LOL. Yep, you guessed it, turquoises and blues (if you didn’t know already) make me scream with joy (and both Margaret and Jenna know me incredibly well, as they so proved with their gift choices!). These turquoise threads are scrummy enough on their own (and I just want to keep playing with them and stroking them), but Jenna also included a really gorgeous beaded fob as well. I’m going to see if itwill fit on my mobile phone so I can carry it with me each day, but if not I have a pair of scissors itching to be adorned too 🙂 Thank you again my dear friend – as always your taste is impeccable, and I love everything! 😀

The next part of my overflowing mail was expected … I went on a bit of a spending splurge on the Bay of Evil, and with the exception of one item none of it was stitching-related, but rather DVD related instead … here’s the biggest piece of exciting shopping (and biggest splurge) … the entire series of ER on DVD – seeing as I keep missing episodes because the TV channels changed or the TV channel just opted not to play an episode or three, I’ve missed lots of the last couple of seasons … so now I get to re-live all the fun from day 1 of the show – I can’t wait! 😀

Of course I had to get the first three seasons of Little Britain as well, plus a couple of movies that Jensen is the main character in (My Bloody Valentine and Ten Inch Hero), and a couple of movies from my youth … of which I don’t think I’ll embarrass myself and spill the details … 😛

The one stitching related item I bought was the set of Valdani threads for Quaker Diamonds by Rosewood Manor … Love, love, love this design 😀

Talking of which, I have to say I’m really loving being “out of fashion” where designs are concerned these days – I think I’m just about the only person in blogland that can’t stand the ‘historical’ or ‘primitive’ samplers and designs out there (with the odd exception every now and again) – and that seems to be the main focus by stitchers these days. While I enjoy seeing them being stitched on other blogs, I have no great urge to run out and buy one, and it’s saving me lots of money this way! It used to be that every blog I opened there’d be some new design tempting me – now it’s only one every now and again … oh the joy of not running to update the wishlist on a daily basis, and enjoying the existing stash I have already – such bliss 😀 Anyway, I digress … moving on from my eccentric stitching tastes and back to the mailbox goodies …

The final stitching thing that I had ordered during a recent stash sale at The Stitching Post arrived – a handful of Delica beads, a couple of JABC buttons and a packet of Mill Hill beads for my Halloween Fairy (to replace the packet I already own that have somehow gone AWOL – of course now I’ve bought a new packet they will arrive out of nowhere someday soon …)

Then one last non-stitching item of greatness … I misplaced my glasses that I use for driving, and now the evening are dark as soon as we leave work I was straining my eyes driving home … I finally opted to buy a cheap pair from Glasses Online, not really caring how they looked as a fashion item, and I’m pretty darned pleased with them … AU$150 including the frames, lenses and anti-glare coating, you little beauty!!! Of course, Murphy and his sodding law proved correct as always, the day after I send my credit card whizzing through the computer cables I found my old glasses sitting in their glasses case under the bed … I’d only been searching for them for 2 whole months!!! Pfffft……. 😛 Obviously I don’t really “need” them (the prescription is only 0.75 in one eye and 0.5 in the other) otherwise I would’ve been shopping a whole lot sooner! … but boy, oh boy, it feels good driving and having that focus tightened up just that fraction more sharply! 😀

I also have an exchange that I’ve received (and sent) and a couple of small finishes, so I think I’ll open up a new post as this one is getting pretty lengthy!