Uncategorized – Page 4 – The Maker's Stash

An idea popped into my head one night while I was stitching away, something that happens quite frequently. I can’t remember now what it was I was stitching on, it could have been a current EPP project or I was making some scrappy pincushions or possibly working on another slow stitch project. The very act of playing with fabric and thread, working with my needle always inspires and ignites my creativity.

I was thinking about my style of scrappy slow stitch patchworking (I feel I need to coin a one word term for this!) and wondering what else I could use this particular technique and style for. Making some stuffed hearts was obvious and something I already had intentions of doing, but were there other shapes I could turn into little slow stitch stuffies?

A couple of years a go I made some simple Christmas felt ornaments that I stitched beads and sequins on to. Just simple shapes, a Christmas tree, stocking, bell and star. Maybe I could turn some of these shapes into some fun slow stitched, scrappy patchwork decorations?

I found my original templates which were quite small and I felt that these needed to be a bit bigger (though it is very tempting to also make some small ones). I re-drew the shapes a little larger, so that they would roughly fit in the palm of my hand.

I cut them out as paper templates and then traced them onto some scrap quilt batting before again cutting out the shapes. Then came the fun part, picking out scraps from my slow stitch basket of goodies!

I ended up with a bit of a colour scheme of red, pink, green and blue, which just happened to match the colour scheme I chose for our Christmas tree this year. Some scraps are modern quilting fabrics while others are vintage. I also I pulled out some little bits of crochet trim cut from doilies.

I cut and arranged my little bits on my quilt batting shapes, starting with the stocking. I used the same techniques I use when making my Snippets and Stitches Bookmarks & Little Patches Pincushions, first tacking the pieces down with an invisible stitch, then I went back over them using kantha stitch.

I added in a little bit of embroidery to the stocking to cover where the fabrics didn’t quite hide the batting. I stitched on the crochet trims after all the fabric and kantha stitch was in place.

Once everything had been stitched down I cut around the shape, removing excess fabric that overlapped. To add a touch of sparkle I stitched on a few sequins and tiny buttons here and there.

For the back of my ornaments I chose a small red gingham (available in my shop). To stuff my ornaments I used thread ends and tiny bits of scrap fabric too small for anything else. It feels great to use up these tiny bits rather than just throwing them out and they make for a nicely stuffed shape.

I used a sparkly thread, Razzle by Wonderfil, to blanket stitch my stuffies closed.

While I was in the final stages of making my ornaments I thought how nice they would look hanging together as a mobile rather than adding to the tree as they did turn out quite large.

We had some lichen covered branches which I thought would make the perfect structure to hang the ornaments from. I used the same razzle thread to create hanging strings, attaching them to the branch with simple loops and knots. Then I used twine to hang the branch.

I’m really happy with how this idea all came together and I think the mobile looks lovely hanging in our living room. You can create so many lovely one of a kind seasonal decorations with left over batting and a few scraps of fabric.

If you would like to make your own slow stitch Christmas mobile, I have uploaded a PDF of my templates to my Free Patterns HERE.

Happy Stitching Friends,

Miss Leela x