24 Nov Learning from friends is the best!

My handwork group meets every other Tuesday.  Usually it is your basic sit and stitch.  Most of them are hand quilters and I usually do hand applique (this quilt that I have been working on for-ever).  Quite a bit of knitting happens too (not me).

When we met two weeks ago, several of us had recently been to classes and learned new techniques or projects.  So we decided to set aside the handwork for the next meeting and teach each other what we had learned.

I showed the group how to make my hot pad (tutorial here) and some potholders.  One of the other ladies showed us how to make these cute ornaments and another showed us a new applique method she learned that works for hand or machine applique.

The ornaments looked so different depending on what fabrics were used.  One of the ladies used all the same fabric – a really pretty cream fabric with some gold detailing on it – very elegant.  Another alternated black and red rows which made the ornament come out striped.  As you can see, I made mine scrappy.

Simple instructions on how to make these:  You need about 40-50 2″ squares, a styrofoam ball, some ribbon and a lot of straight pins.  Pin one of the squares to cover the “bottom” of the styrofoam ball.  Fold a 2″ square into a triangle and fold again into a smaller triangle.  Pin each raw edge of the triangle across a corner of the fabric square you pinned to the ball, with the point of the triangle toward the center of the square.  Do this for each corner of the fabric square.  For the second row, place the folded triangle points in between the points from the previous row.  Keep making rows moving up the ball until a space smaller than a 2″ square is all that is left.  Glue a 2″ square to cover the rest of the ball.  Make a bow and hanging loop and pin them into place.  If you put a little glue on the pin for the hanging loop, it will help it stay better.

Happy Thanksgiving to all my US readers!