Little House Ornament

little house front, originally uploaded by poketypatch.

I decided it was time to start thinking about making some ornaments since I signed up for the Ornament Swap again this year. I received my list of swap partners yesterday. The group is being administered by swap-bot.  This is a pretty cool site, especially if you like to participate in swaps.  I signed up for another swap that is swapping ribbon!  I think it is interesting and awesome that most of my swapping partners in the ornament swap are from the opposite parts of the USA than me, and two are from other countries! Last year my whole family got into the excitement of receiving the different ornaments. I hoping that this year will be just as much fun. 

To get in the mood, I did a quick GOOGLE search of handmade ornaments. The first site that popped up was Pimp Stitch. I was a little taken back by the name, but clicked anyways. Well, I hit the motherload - not only was there the absolute best tutorial here for a wee little house ornament, but there were tutorials for lots of embroidery related crafts!

The most recent post on the blog chronicled an interview with Jenny Hart of Sublime Stitching: Hundreds of Hip Embroidery Patterns and How-To. Do you ever think that things just are supposed to happen, like clicking to a blog on a whim, and finding just exactly what you are currently interested in? During a recent surgical recuperation, I used the book Sublime Stitching to start learning how to embroider with it's great projects and patterns.

So, last night I took the plunge and made one of the little house ornaments. I have to say it was a fun, easy project. The only change I would make to the order of putting the ornament together would be to embroider the decorative elements before I sewed it together. It is probably just me and my inexperience at embroidery (don't look too closely at my stitches!), but I had a hard time with the embroidery with the bottom already sewn on the ornament. Despite this lack of experience, I think that the final product was pretty sweet!  It definitely brightened my day to see this cute little cottage sitting on my bedside table when I woke up this morning!