Attempting to turn embroideries into Christmas ornaments

I’ve had to try to find something to do with my backlog of Christmas kits I’ve accumulated through my Love Embroidery magazine subscription.

I shared recently the five I’ve worked through to date and two of those were simple little designs that just look lost in a hoop, and honestly who is hanging up a bunch of random Christmas embroideries each year? Not me! I needed something more practical to do with them.

Inspired by the felt bauble kits I thought I’d attempt to turn them into hanging ornaments, especially since I already have quite a bit of HeatN’Bond left from my wall hanging project.

I’d never tried anything like this before so it was very much trial and error and I learned a few things! (Mostly not to do it this way)

To start I ironed on the HeatN’Bond to the back of the embroidery, then cut around it. With the tree I left a good border but with the gingerbread house I went as close as I dared to the edge… Which was a bit too far because I did cut a few bits and had to fix them down with glue later!

The house I decided looked better against a blue sky so I appliqued that between the house and the white felt backing. I cut around it to a snowglobe-esque shape.

The adhesive didn’t work great on the felt and the edges of the very cheap cotton fabric were fraying and needed securing, so I stitched all around the it with silver thread (I love the look of metallics but they’re horrible to work with!). I also added some silver “snow” falling because the sky looked very empty.

The silver actually looks quite nice and subtle sparkles in the light like snow kind of does

I stitched this front bit to another bit of felt to hide the back. I used whip stitch which I hate because it’s 1) boring to do and takes ages and 2) I’m rubbish at keeping them even so it always looks crap when I’ve finished. The edges of this one don’t look good but I think from a distance I can forget about that… Otherwise I have to either do it again or edge it and I cba with that.

The tree I also stuck to white felt and stitched in gold thread to secure the edges (and also some PVA glue because I didn’t do a great job…). Then I whip stitched it to some green felt backing. It looks very homemade but it’s fine!

Something about the gold on the white reminds me of church, which since childhood I’ve only been to for my Grandma’s funeral. I think our village church had some homemade wall hangings or table runners with gold edging like this. I guess since this is for Christmas that’s appropriate!

Next time I might actually remember to put the ribbon inside the front & back pieces before I stitched it all together!

This all took me about a day to do, though probably 2 hours of that was going up and downstairs from my craft room to the ironing board in the kitchen because I kept forgetting things. We rewatched Deadpool and Wolverine, now it’s on DisneyPlus, while I did a lot of the struggling with metallic thread!

I might make some more of these with my selection of Christmas transfer patterns I’ve got, if I do I’ll definitely stitch directly on the felt so I don’t have to faff around so much!