Santa Baby: Ornament Tutorial

I think I may have mentioned a time or two my love for all things Santa. A few years ago when my boys were young, I made these Santa ornaments as a bit of nonsense to hang on the tree.  Pictures of the boys were printed on inkjet fabric sheets and a little sheep's wool was added for the beard.They were a big hit and I ended up making quite a few as gifts for friends (with pictures of their own kids I mean, not mine!) All good fun.

I haven't made any for some years, but now my sister has a grand baby and I figured she would love one. (Nancy, if you are reading this:  stop now and come back after Christmas!)  In this post I will share directions for the ornament, the full sized foundation, and instructions on how you can personalize it for a special child.

The original block had been drawn in EQ2 I think, and those files are long gone from my archives so I redrew it in EQ7, eliminating several patches to simplify the piecing.  It's pretty close to the original...even improved, as it allows a  bit more space for the face. It's simple to foundation piece.

Santa Baby Ornament

Finished Size:  8" high x 4" wide                             1/4" seam allowance used throughout

Materials Required

Santa Baby Foundation (click here to download from my website)

Close up digital picture of a cute baby (about 1-1/2" square) 

Scraps of red, white and black fabric 

Backing fabric 8-1/2" x 5"

An inkjet printer sheet (and a printer!)

A small amount of fibrefill for stuffing

Small amount of wool for beard (you could even use a bit of the fibrefill stuffing)

Sewing thread

8" piece of floss (or narrow ribbon) for hanging

hand needle (for sewing the opening closed).

Rotary cutter and mat

Sewing machine

Hot melt glue gun

Directions:
First, download the foundation. Please note that when you go to print the pdf, you must have the box checked which says ACTUAL SIZE, 100%,  otherwise your templates will not print correctly.

Find an appropriate picture to use for Santa Baby's face.Wanting to keep this a surprise and not tip my hand, I nonchalantly asked for a close-up picture of  Taylor.  Here's what I got...adorable, but not exactly my idea of a close up!

I cropped in close to her face in Photoshop so that the image was more-or-less square.  (Oh, this is going to be so cute with those chubby cheeks and that little tongue sticking out!)

I inserted the photo into a word processing program.  Unsure of which size would look best in the design, I formatted it in 3 sizes.  In the end, the 3.75 cm x 3.75 cm  (1-1/2") size in the middle row below worked best.

The images were printed on inkjet printable fabric sheets (available at Mrs. Pugsley's) and trimmed 1/4" past the edge of the photo on all sides.

 The photo goes in the #1 spot in the foundation, with the wrong side of the photo facing the wrong side of the paper. (i.e. the printed size is facing you and the picture is facing away from you on the back of the paper.)

 It helps to hold it up to the window to get it properly placed;  you want at least 1/4" extending past all the lines.  When you are happy with the placement, secure with a pin. (Note:  I moved it up 1/4" after this picture was taken before sewing;  it was hard to get the fabric in the right spot while taking this picture.)

From here on in, follow the numbers until your foundation is complete. If you are not familiar with foundation piecing, a Google search should bring you lots of help.  Trim with your rotary cutter on the outside lines.

 Place your pieced foundation right sides together with your backing fabric and stitch around the outside lines, leaving an opening to turn along one side.  You can see I didn't cut my backing to size,I stitched and trimmed in one step.  At this point, carefully remove your paper foundation. Clip your corners and turn right side out through the opening.

Just try to stop smiling as you stuff your Santa Baby with fibre fill, and stitch the opening closed with hand stitches.

 They look like a line of Rockettes :)

I debated about this next part, since this is a little girl, but in the end...Santa Baby really needed a beard.  I washed some wool which came from a nearby farm in Nappan, heated up the glue gun, and put on a dab to hold the wool in place.

I used red embroidery floss as a hanger, just stitching a loop to the back.

There is one for Taylor's Mom, and one for each set of grandparents: a fun keepsake for baby's first Christmas.

 Enjoy! If you make some, I sure hope you'll share a picture with us.

Fruit Smoothie

I've added another pattern to the line-up of instant downloads through Craftsy.  It happens to be one of my all time favourites:  Fruit Smoothie  If you are a batik lover - like me - you'll appreciate the movement these fabrics bring to the table.  It makes a stunning centrepiece as shown here on a 42" round table... but honestly that's not how I use my quilt. (Don't you love that pitcher - it was a birthday gift from my Mom one year.)

Mine is hung on the wall and I love the pop of colour it adds to the room.  The pattern includes simple directions on how to hang this odd-shaped quilt - easier than you think.

 (Just to prove it is actually hanging, here it is shown on the wall next to the china cabinet!)

The quilt is easier than you suspect, using just one block and a very gentle curve.  You can download the pattern for Fruit Smoothie here at Craftsy, or order a print copy the old-fashioned way through my website.

Subtle Changes

Change is inevitable.

This month will see the end of my website being hosted by Sympatico, who have decided to discontinue the service.  To me, this has meant a bit of scrambling to find a new host and get my files uploaded there, but to you all it means is that my address is now: karenneary.ca  Please update your bookmarks. Nothing else has changed, email remains the same.

My website has been up since 1993 and I honestly believe it makes me the longest running quilt website in Canada. There were others at the time of course, but they have long since gone. Building that first website continues to be a favourite memory; while very pregnant, I purchased a book entitled "How To Build A Website" and tackled basic html coding.  What a rush when I uploaded the first page for the whole world to see!  The background looked like crinkled paper and I thought it was the bomb. It took about 3 months for me to figure out why my pictures showed up fine in Internet Explorer but appeared as those dreaded red "X's" in Netscape (remember Netscape?) I finally clued in that the browser could not read capital letters, and of course as a former English teacher...I always began things with a capital letter!  Once all my files were renamed in lower case letters and uploaded to the server the issue was resolved.  That was another huge feeling of accomplishment.

Moving over to the new host was fairly straightforward, although it did require figuring out how to park a domain as I also purchased sewkarenlycreated.com.  I love the challenge of learning to do these things for myself. It's the same sense of "I did it!" that comes from finishing a quilt.

Sincere thanks to Kate from Arts and Socks for her recommendation of a new trustworthy host.
(Oh...and the picture was taken on a very, very icy Lynn Road on Saturday!)

Filling the Santa Sack

Yesterday the reindeer picked up the parcel to deliver to the boys. (Those icy, snow-covered roads were no deterrent to Santa's magical flying creatures!)

The bags were filled with an assortment of tasty/useful/useless items including these rice bag hand warmers.  This idea came to me last Saturday while waiting in the cold for our Christmas parade - wish I'd had some then!  To make the hand warmers, I cut 2 pairs of 3-1/2" squares of cotton...

 ...and filled them with 1/4 cup of long grain white rice. 15-20 seconds in the microwave is all it takes to make these toasty hot.

The Avery site has lots of label templates and I chose some festive ones to jazz up the presentation.  

To accompany these, I also stitched full-sized rice bags from a scrap of flannelette from the stash.  I cut the fabric into 8-1/2" x 11" rectangles.

To make them all the same but different- so they could tell them apart- I stitched their initial on each. To do this, I enlarged Curl font  in WORD to size 200 and traced the letters onto the fabric.  With a piece of tear-away stabilizer under the fabric, the letters were free motion stitched using cotton thread.  It only took a few minutes to do each one.

They were filled with 4-1/2 cups of rice each. Not fancy by any means, but quick and easy - and very useful.  There are full directions for patchwork rice bags here if you'd like to try one.

The bags also contained microwave popcorn, silly putty, fruit snacks,toiletries, gold-fish crackers, cans of silly string and, of course, chocolate.

I found these perfect print-ready tags online, and used a "Saint Nicholas" font to add their names, and a few details about that naughty or nice business.

The pattern for the Santa Bags may be found  here and the tags are at  Brooklyn Limestone.
The parcel also went with an advent calendar, containers of Christmas baking, and adorable Baby Bel cheeses with Christmas motifs. It arrived around suppertime and to say the boys had fun is an understatement;  a text message and a dozen or so happy emails is testament to that. Exams start next week and hopefully there will be a cookie or two left to nibble on during late nights of studying. In the end, it wouldn't matter what was sent because ultimately those bags were simply filled with love and a reminder of home -whether it be Amherst, Inverness or Ottawa- and family...which is what Christmas is all about.

Sew A Santa Sack

Have you looked at your calendar?  A month from today will be Christmas!!  I love doing fun, silly things to celebrate the holidays.

You may recall that last year I made 5 Christmas stockings for my university son and his room mates and had a great time stuffing them with goodies for them to enjoy during exam time.

The boys absolutely loved the stockings, and having their name free motion embroidered was a special treat.

This year that son is in a smaller apartment, with fewer roommates. I didn't want to repeat the stocking idea so decided instead to make Santa sacks. These bags are a good size - 12" x 16" -and made to last many Christmases. They are fully lined, and have an easy drawstring casing (no buttonholes to make!) I made three in an afternoon and liked them so much that I decided to write up a pattern. My good friend Cheryl, aka Grandma CoCo, worked her magic quickly in checking the instructions for clarity and errors.   If you'd like to make your own, you can download the pattern here.

I think these would be a fun idea for a grandparent who doesn't get to spend Christmas morning with their grandchild. They could place a special gift from Santa for the child, left under their tree. 

For sure I will be making one of these for my sister and brother-in-law for their new grand baby.

In a post soon I will share some of the things I put in these Santa sacks for the boys. (Hmmm...maybe I should have named them Mrs Santa sacks!)

EDIT:Not two hours after she downloaded the pattern, Jeanne Kay Speight has hers all made!!

It's fabulous, Jeanne Kaye...but I have to wonder...what's in your coffee?!?  Wow, you are fast! Thanks so much for sharing the picture.

An Update On The New Book

Many of you have been asking when the book will be arriving and believe me, no one wants it more than me!  It's like the last few weeks of a pregnancy where you just want that baby in your hands. Patience isn't always easy.  The original release date was October 7 and obviously that didn't happen...but for a very good reason.  The editors at AQS decided that it would be a wonderful thing to include a CD of templates with the book so that you can print your own at home full-sized, instead of trucking out to get things photocopied and enlarged.  Honestly, I love the idea...but it has added a bit of time to the project.

It is imperative that these templates are perfect - it is patchwork after all, and the pieces HAVE to fit together with exact precision.  It takes checking, rechecking, and RECHECKING by many individuals before we get the go ahead.  I am part of the checking process, and I am really happy that AQS is being so diligent in their work. This is not a place to make mistakes.

The book part is done - and beautifully done I must say.  The piecing diagrams are incredibly well drawn, I could not be more pleased, and I want this CD of templates to be perfect too.  It will take a bit longer, but the wait will be worth it.  Thank you for your patience (I am working on mine :))

A Useful Self

Self-threading needles:  have you tried them?  They are a great time (not to mention frustration!) saver.  On my latest quilt, I used a 12 weight topstitching thread to do a bit of accent stitching over top of the quilting.  There were a lot of ends to darn in, and I was not looking forward to threading this thick thread into the small eye of the needle over and over again.

This packet of self-threading needles was perfect as it has a variety of sizes in the package and I found one which handled the heavy thread with ease.  These unique needles actually have two eyes, and a slot at the top where you lay the thread and simply pull it down into the bottom eye.  The top eye acts as a buffer in case the thread slips out mid seam.

 I got these at Mrs. Pugsley's.

Welcome Blogathoners!

If you are visiting this week as part of Blogathon Canada, welcome aboard!  I am pleased to be included on the list for my province as a Nova Scotia Blogger (Bluenose Blogger sounds like a good title, actually!) Please have a look around;  if you type "tutorial" in the search this blog field on the left, you will bring up a few free projects from the past. My patterns may be purchased from my website. I hope you enjoy the posts, and will make this a regular stop on your daily blog reading.
The host for Nova Scotia is Linda, who blogs here;  visit her site to see the complete list of N.S. bloggers and enter to w in some great give-aways!

Buried

I feel like I've been spinning my wheels for the past month or so, getting caught up from Fibre Arts Festival and with yesterday's snow now my wheels are literally spinning!  Our first real snowfall of the season...and it's a pretty one!

Inside, I've been working away on the colourful fabrics from Mrs. P's that I showed you in this post.  I am about half way through the quilting, and have a few more fiddly details to work out on the pièce de résistance (the accompanying canopy) and then it's on to writing the directions.  Barring interruptions, that's a good week's worth of work before it's ready to post.

 There are also a few chores which need doing...like putting the patio furniture away :)

ABC&123

Jeanne Kaye Speight has done it again!  She has finished another top, this one my Quilt Of Learning pattern.

Jeanne Kaye writes, "I loved making this pattern! It reminded me of all the wonderful hours I spent watching Sesame Street with my two little boys...Thank you for another terrific pattern. I used a mini jelly roll, a pack of 6 fat quarters, and 3 yards of aqua fabric from the same line."  Jeanne Kaye's quilt is now waiting for her favourite longarmer to work her magic.  I can't wait to see how she quilts it.

Thank you Jeanne Kaye;  if you scroll back a few posts you will be able to see several more of Jeanne Kaye's projects. No wonder Linda from Stitch Lines refers to you as the Energizer Bunny!

Meet A Quilt Dude

As I've said many times before, I meet a lot of interesting people on my quilt journey and today I will introduce you to one who really stands out: Jose Hermosillo from San Diego.  First let me clarify the word "meet" because it's used in a virtual not a real sense.  I encountered Jose when he posted this picture of his Simply Santa table runner on Craftsy.  His moniker there is Quilt Dude.

What really caught my attention was his fabulous attitude, and sense of humour.  His response to the standard Craftsy question of "What are you most proud of about this project?"  was " It looks just like the picture! LOL".  This is someone having fun with quilting.  I left a comment, he responded, and eventually we had a nice little chit chat.  He generously shared more pictures of his work and a little about himself which I found very interesting, so I asked his permission to share it here with you.

"I live in San Diego, and started quilting in the mid 90's for a bit, really, on a whim. My first quilt, needless to say, was a disaster, but I was proud of it. More than the quilt itself, though, I liked the process of creating, so I decided to buy a book [my quilting bible is what I call it and still have it and refer to it regularly!]... I wanted to quilt the right way, and started making quilts - mostly for my then infant nephews and nieces. All those quilts are long gone, too. After a few years, I stopped quilting, and in 2010 one day I just decided Hey, I liked quilting, let me start doing that again....I love quilting, it relaxes me, I get lost in it for hours, sometime without meaning to."  

Much of the work from this quilt dude's hands is given as gifts.  Last Christmas he made 25 of these small Christmas trees to share (you can see on the blue one how they light up!).

This is a family tree quilt made for Christmas 2011 for his parents showing brothers, sisters, and cousins.

One of his first quilts, held by its happy owner, remains one of Jose's all time favourites.

 " I don't know what my style of quilting is, I don't want to say "modern", but I don't really like those "grandma" quilts, either. I do take inspiration from them, however. I love color, I like to play with composition [I mean, I don't stick to making symmetrical, evenly spaced and centered blocks on quilts, they can be boring to me], there is no rule, I do what I want! LOL. I also try to learn a new technique with every quilt. I'm not a big fan of curves, so I just say, I like geometrical quilts... 

This quilt is an homage to his favourite artist, Prince. It's a whole cloth on the front, with lyrics from his songs as the quilting. The back is pieced scraps of purple and white.

Below is Jose's exquisite interpretation of a Piet Mondriaan painting. 

This gorgeous quilt is pieced from batiks, with colourful squares surrounding Hoffman Bali tiles. Wow!

"As most of us do, I see through quilter's eyes, always looking at color combinations, patterns, and inspiration to possibly be put down into a quilt top. Again, as most of us do, I'm sure, I always have two, three, four projects in mind that I want to do while I currently work on finishing the two, three projects on my table and in my sewing machine."

Thank you Jose for sharing your talents in this virtual quilt show;  I for one have enjoyed it very much.  You are one creative quilt dude!   

Craftsy Design Award Winners

My sincerest thanks to all who voted for my quilt Rhythmic in the recent Craftsy Design Awards.

You can check out the winners here!

The Quiltmare was a Nightmare

We've hit a few snags in our latest quilt - including running short of fabric twice - so we have called a halt to production as we reassess and see where it is headed.  Polly is tired of jumping through hoops to make it come together.

This is not unusual in the development of a new pattern because it requires lots of tweaking to make things gel, and in the simplest way possible.  The latter is key to a successful design.  As Einstein said, "make things as simple as possible, but no simpler". We are working towards that end. 

Christmas Tea

La Guilde Acadienne de Clare is busily preparing goodies for their Christmas Tea and they invite you to join them on November 23, from 11 - 3 pm.  You can do some Christmas shopping while enjoying your treats, and the hospitality is second to none!

A Recurring Quiltmare

I've had a quilt stuck in my head for over a year.  I have sewn it virtually in many fabrics and colour combinations, tweaking the design each time.  When I saw this striped fabric at Mrs. Pugsley's, I knew it was time to make it for real.

The coordinates are solids and subtle dots;  the red and white polka dot will be backing. It makes me think of Minnie Mouse, but the design has no mice. It will include all kinds of geometric shapes: circles, squares, diamonds, triangles...and stripes. This will be a fun project to sew and I am excited to start cutting.