Vintage Quilt Ornaments

Happy New Year!!

I’ve been wanting to do something with Grandma’s quilts that are tattered – holes everywhere. I’ve seen a lot of neat accessories made with them, but haven’t gotten around to playing with them until right before Christmas when I made my angel ornament for Dave for our Christmas Day ornament tradition.

Directions to make these are the same for each. I start by looking for a picture of whatever I’m wanting to make. With the hearts I just drew one, but for the butterfly and angel I found pictures online.

I found this picture of a butterfly and before printing it out, I adjusted it to the size I wanted.

Now I carefully cut that shape out because I’ll be using both pieces later.

Now it’s time to audition the placement of the cutout on the quilt.

After you have found the area you like, you can either place the butterfly cutout over that spot and draw around, or draw around this opening. I chose the latter using an erasable pen.

Next, just cut on that line, and you have the start of your butterfly.

Next I added a stabilizer to the back of the new butterfly. I’m using WovenFuse2, which is fused on one side and is heavyweight, but other heavyweight stabilizers will work. I wanted something that would make these ornaments sturdy. SF101 would be too light for this project since I’m taking it to the sewing machine.

Now to iron down the stabilizer, cut around the butterfly, and take it to the sewing machine.

I’m using a blanket stitch and sewing all the way around the ornament. To complete it you need to put something in the center for the body. I used a ribbon and just glued it down.

Here are pictures of the hearts, a much easier shape to machine stitch! I added a metal word before I added the stabilizer so it doesn’t show on the back.

And the hearts ready to be stitched.

Here they are finished.

You could sew these by hand, but you’d probably not use such a heavy stabilizer. I didn’t add a hanger since I’m not sure what I’ll be doing with these, but it could easily be hand-sewn at the end. I see making more of these in my future.

Some other sewing I’ve done in the last couple of days was making these tissue and lip balm holders. It’s a great way to use up some of those scraps. The tissue holders are made from my fabric. The lip balm holders are from commercial fabric I have in my stash. They will be surprises that I’ll drop off in coffee shops and libraries as part of the Art Abandonment Project.