Christmas Ornament 2021

Every year I make an ornament to give to family and friends.  I have been doing this for many years.  This year I decided to take a necklace idea I had for my yoyo talk in August and turn it into an ornament.

What made it fun was I got to buy and use holiday buttons. I have always enjoyed buttons. I remember going through this light blue round tin container my mother had for her buttons.  I never had a reason to use any, I just liked the look and shape and color of so many buttons.  Now a days I especially like the novelty ones.  They are bright and imaginative but I don’t often use novelty buttons for my clothes.  I just stick to the faithful round ones. But this gave me a reason to buy some Christmas buttons.  There were candy canes, and packages, gingerbread men and ornaments.  One packet had a sleigh, reindeer, Santa head, and Christmas tree.  All these buttons were shank buttons but buttons with holes would work just as well.

If you remember back in October, I wrote about making a necklace of yoyos and a flamingo button to go along with my talk on yoyos at my local Quilt guild.  Here is a picture of it. 

 

For the necklace I used a 2 1/4 inch yoyo (I started with a 5 inch circle), then the middle pink yoyo was 1 ½ inch yoyo (3 ½ inch circle) and on top was a 1 inch by 1 ½ inch oval (2 ½  by 3 ½  inch oval piece of fabric) and then top with the button.  I decided to use the same sizes for the ornaments, 

The holiday buttons were all kinds of shapes and sizes.  Some were bigger than the small oval yoyo so I decided to go with just the 2 round yoyos.  But then there were some small buttons that did not cover the hole in the yoyo like the bigger buttons did, so for some I used the oval yoyo after all.  The hole in the oval yoyo was small enough that ever the small buttons could cover it.

I had some Christmas fabric cut in 3.5 and 5 inches so I picked the colors from what I had cut.  If you do this ornament, you could mix and match or use all the same colors.  The one thing to consider is will your button show up on the fabric you choose.  You don’t want a primarily green button on a green yoyo; your button won’t show up very well.  You can see the tree in the picture below but it doesn’t stand out.  Take a look at the reindeer pictures above.  Can you tell the reindeer has antlers?  Not easily.  So, choosing the colors of your yoyos is important with what colored button you use.

See how much better the tree looks on the red yoyo.

Once you have your yoyos made, you have to sew they all together. (to be honest I made the yoyos as I made the ornament so I wouldn’t forget what fabric I was using for which button.) ,   Putting the ornament together I started from the top down.  I sewed the button on first yoyo and then sewed the rest of the yoyos together.  I found it easier to get the button on if I was just manipulating one yoyo (and then the threads were hidden).

When I attached yoyo to yoyo, I tried to hide my stitches under the top yoyo just like you would if you were appliqueing a picture for a quilt.  This is especially important when you are sewing on the bottom yoyo.  If your stitches just catch the first layer of fabric of the bottom yoyo, you won’t see any stitches on the back of the ornament. 

Once all the yoyos and button are sewn together just add a thread through the top edge of the biggest yoyo for a hanger.  I try to match the color of that big yoyo.  And I used perle cotton for the hanger as it is a bit thicker than regular sewing thread and is not likely to break.

And now you have a new ornament.  Happy Decorating.

 

©2021 Cheryl Fillion