Advent 2017:: Day 5

As a few of you requested the tutorial for the Christmas Bauble Cards here goes...

You will need:

•  a piece of white craft felt (acrylic) 
• a piece of coloured craft felt (to match your colour scheme)
• a selection of coloured organza ribbons or strips of organza fabric
• pins and fabric scissors
• a sewing machine and machine threads (preferably polyester threads)
• a soldering iron (optional)
• a round metal template (I use a golden syrup lid)
• a small piece of ribbon 
• a button, bow or other small trim.

Begin by arranging the ribbon/organza in overlapping rows on the white felt until you get a pleasing arrangement of colours. When you are happy with them pin in place up the sides as shown. There is no need for bondaweb or tacking.

With your machine set for normal sewing and with some matching polyester thread, secure the rows of ribbon/organza with rows of decorative stitches, removing the pins as you go. If your machine does not have any decorative stitches, rows of zigzag work as well and look just as pretty.

Continue to add parallel rows of stitching to build up a lovely rich surface pattern. Feel free to change your thread colour too. I used three or four colours.

If you have a soldering iron, read on. If not I'll give you an alternative in a minute. Place your stitched felt on top of your coloured felt and and with your metal template very carefully cut out a circle with your soldering iron, remembering to leave a little tab at the top of the circle for hanging. Take care with the placement of your template... I managed to get nine ornaments from the one bit of stitched felt. Go slowly and mind your fingers!

The soldering iron should cut through the layers and seal the two different felts together giving you a neat backing. If your thread was not polyester the soldering iron may catch on the thread and not cut through properly but you can still mark out the circle this way and cut through most of it.

You will probably need to cut out the marked circles with a scissors where the soldering iron has not cut all the way through. If you do not have a soldering iron just pin the felts together and mark out circles on the reverse, cutting them out with scissors and keeping the layers pinned together.

In both cases the baubles look better with a neatened edge so starting at one side of the tab, stitch a zigzag stitch all the way around the edge of the bauble until you reach the other side of the tab. Don't worry about the tab as you won't see this on the finished bauble.

At this stage it should look like this. You can use the soldering iron to burn holes in the baubles to create more pattern, or alternatively you could stitch on some beads or sequins.

Tie off any loose ends and then stitch a short length of ribbon to the tab for hanging, covering the join with a pretty button or bow. You can then hang it on your tree or stitch it onto a card it with a couple of stitches at the top of the ribbon. Your card is now all ready to send!

Do let me know how you have got on and feel free to send me a photo of your finished results!