Ornaments

I was so thrilled with Amy's Ornament Swap last year that I had to join in again this year. Sometimes it's good to just add more to the already-very-long to do list. I was loosely inspired by this photo I took on our trip to DC.I knew I wanted to do something very closely related to my regular artwork. (I was pleased with the ornaments I did last year, but they were a bit "country" and I'm not sure they were really "me." Plus, it took me forever to come up with the idea and put them together. But, whatever. That's in the past.)

So here are the 2007 ornaments in progress.You can also see the green shiny fabric and zipper on my workspace. I whipped up a little holiday skirt to wear to a Christmas party last week. You'll see that in more pictures sometime soon.

I did some ornaments in traditional red and green and some in other colors.
They are fused. (Obviously.) Then I added a little bit of batting and fused another piece of fabric to the back. I cut the batting smaller than the piece so the front and the back end up fused to each other -- like a Pop Tart. Then I did a bit of machine stitching. It would have been fun to do some hand embroidery, but I made about 15 in about two days, so I had to be speedy and efficient.

These are the five I sent to Amy for her swap.
Oh yes, I added to beads too. So fun! I just added a grommet/eyelet to the top and bottom and wired a little collection of coordinating beads and a jingle bell to each ornament.

Here are some individual beauty shots.

Berries!

I think those machine quilted lines added a subtle additional layer of design.

I had originally considered adding some leaf shapes, like in the inspiration photo. But bare branches seemed to work so much better.I can hardly wait to see what hand-made treasures I'll receive in exchange. You can see some of the possibilities here.