Abby's First Christmas

It's a tradition for me to embroider an individualized ornament for each new grandchild. For Melody, I cross-stitched baby feet. For Annie, an owl. Jodie didn't have anything in particular in mind and encouraged me to use my imagination. 

Abby's nursery is decorated with a goat (kid) theme, so I jumped into that idea. I found this adorable image online and used it as my starting point. I chose a slightly different color scheme, and sketched a little Christmas stocking hanging from the goat's mouth instead of the tin can.

I designed the back myself, using an old-fashioned compass to draw the circles. I used my own handwriting for the lettering ... but not until after I spent more than an hour trying to figure out how to do it on the computer and coming up short - and frustrated. I finally decided "done is better than good" and went with the less professional-looking version.

I used some scrap fabric as the ground cloth. I think this might actually be a piece of an old bedsheet. It was quite thin, so before I started stitching on it, I ironed on a piece of fusible interfacing. The interfacing is translucent, so it's a bit hard to see in the photo. But if you look inside those blue lines the edges are visible.

Then I did a floss toss, choosing goat and Christmas colors.

The stitching went quickly, once the designs were transferred onto the fabric. I embellished the back with two tiny red buttons.

I decided to finish the ornament using these "Finishing Forms." They work much like covered buttons. A thin layer of fiberfill/batting is laid over the convex side of the form. The stitching is laid on top of that. The fabric is stretched to the back side of the form and glued in place. 

Then the two stitched pieces are glued together along the edges. Finally, I covered the edge of the ornament with a braided cord, adding a hanging loop at the top.

That's pretty cute!

Front and back.