Do you sew Christmas or holiday gifts for friends or relatives? Most years I try to sew some gifts for some special friends and relatives. This past summer I attended a wedding of one of my nephews. One of the things I do at weddings of people that are special to me is I take home some of the wedding favors and sew a Christmas ornament from them. Then I send the ornament to them for their first Christmas as a married couple. This particular wedding didn't have any favors to take home so I took home two corsages that the groom's father (my brother) and the groom's brother (another nephew of mine) wore. The flowers were silk.
I searched the Internet for images of ornaments to find one I liked that I thought I could sew and I found this tutorial in French
here .Thank goodness for Google Translate. The directions were simple to follow. I changed the original circle size to 10 inches in diameter so that the corsages would fit on the final squares.
I had some nice holiday fabric that had metallic accents to choose from that looked good with corsages.
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| corsage with possible fabric choices |
1.) I followed the tutorial but added some extra steps.
2.) I painted a product called "No Flow" by Jacquard (it keeps ink from bleeding) onto ribbon and wrote the year of their wedding on it with a brush micron pen. I did this twice.
3.) I machine sewed the ribbon onto holiday black fabric.
4.) I stitched the ribbon/black fabric to each side of what would be the ornament.
5.) Then I went back to the tutorial steps of stuffing the ornament and stitching it closed, but when I was hand stitching it closed, I sewed a ribbon in so that the ornament could be hung.
6.) I hand stitched a corsage to each side of the ornament.
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| One side of the ornament |
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| Other side of the ornament |
For most of the wedding/Christmas ornaments I have something from the wedding with the couples' name, too. This wedding had a 1940's theme and the guests were requested to dress as such. My husband and I did and about half of the other guests did, too. They got married in a theatre on the stage and had a playbill and the musical notes on the corsage were a running theme throughout. I'm linking this to
Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on their posts to let them know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.
oh how special! I can only imagine the couple's reaction to this. You are thoughtful. I have thought about doing something with the favor, but never followed through. LeeAnna at not afraid of color
ReplyDeleteThanks. It's a fun thing to do to try to think of how to use the favors.
Deletethis is a wonderful memento of a special day! The silk flowers add a lot of texture to the stitched ornament.
ReplyDeleteI have one from my own wedding, and that's always the first one that I hang on our tree each Christmas so I hope they will like this as I do.
DeleteWhat a wonderful idea! Finally a use for wedding favors, I hate just tossing them but you can only keep so much stuff.
ReplyDeleteMost of the wedding favors are so lovely. I agree that you can only keep so much stuff.
Deletehow thoughtful and beautiful! thanks for sharing so generously of your artistic compassion!!
ReplyDeleteThank you. When I make something, I feel like a kid running to my mom and saying "look what I made ." Isn't that silly?
DeleteWhat a lovely idea, Regina. It's a beauty and I'm sure it will be treasured. As for me, I sew only one or two things. One is the "annual Christmas boxer shorts" for my son (now 29). I try to find a funky fabric to which he can relate, and so far have nailed it every time (but who's bragging?)! It's my daughter's turn for pj pants this year, and I have a fabulous Indian cotton from MAIWA Handprints to do the honours. The rest of my hand-made gifts are knitted. This year, socks and cowls. :-)
ReplyDeleteThanks. I also sew bookmarks sometimes for friends, but that's about it for homemade gifts.
DeleteVery sweet idea, indeed, and tour creation is beautiful.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Ann. I was glad I found that tutorial.
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