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Woodland Ornaments Tutorial
Oops! We bumped our Holidays at Home post… Don’t miss it!
Meg, from elsie marley and our board, created this Woodland Ornaments Tutorial series just for you! Enjoy, and be sure to download the Woodland Ornament PDF Pattern.
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Some of my favorite ornaments growing up were these birds that didn’t hang on the tree, but instead wrapped around the branches with wire. They looked so lovely sitting up on the branch and you could pose them anyway you liked. Recently someone told me that in Germany they have little wooden mushrooms on wires and they fill their Christmas tree with them. I thought we should have more wired ornaments. My first idea was a pinecone because they naturally sit up on branches. And a little sprig of holly wrapped around an evergreen bough would look right. And of course some mushrooms. So I made fabric version of a pinecone, holly and berries, and a mushroom and sewed some thin wire into each of them. |
I used 26 gauge wire for all of them, but any thin, easily bendable wire will do. Of course you don’t need to add the wire. All these ornaments can be strung up with a ribbon or just used for decoration. The patterns can be enlarged or shrunk to make bigger or smaller versions. I think a couple giant pinecones would make a great center piece. And big mushrooms under the Christmas tree would be very woodsy. All the ornaments are mostly sewn by machine, but you could hand sew all of them without too many problems. I hope you enjoy making these, I did! Be sure to share them with us when you’re done!
Use a 1/4 inch seam allowance.
Mushroom Ornament
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Materials: - cotton or linen scraps - wool or polyfil stuffing - tweezers - 26 gauge wire (about 12 inches) - yarn darning needle |
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Cut all the pattern pieces out: the big circle out of your main fabric and all the other pieces from your contrasting fabric. I used a big gingham as my main fabric (for the mushroom cap) and linen for the rest of the mushroom. Linen looks awfully nice, but because this mushroom is small it’s a bit of a pain to work with. |
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To start, baste around the edge of the mushroom cap. Now take the donut shaped piece (the bottom of the mushroom cap) and fold it in half. Press a crease in it with your fingers, open it, fold in half the opposite way and press again. Do this with the mushroom cap as well. |
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With right sides facing, match up the creases and pin. Gather the mushroom cap until it is the same size as the bottom of the cap by pulling the thread (or the bobbin thread, if you basted with a sewing machine). Sew all the way around the circle and turn out through the donut hole, using the tweezers if necessary. |
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Next, sew the two stem pieces together right sides facing. Then pin and sew the bottom of the stem piece on to, well, the bottom of the stem. Clip the curve and turn out (again using the tweezers to help). To insert the wire, first thread the needle with the wire. Pull a few inches through and bend the wire so it doesn’t slip out of the needle. Then sew up from the bottom of the stem, up the length of the stem, and then back down and out. Sew a few stitches to secure the wire to the side—these won’t be seen, so don’t worry about matching thread or sloppy stitches. |
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Hand stitch the cap on (maybe even at a jaunty angle) and you’re done! |
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Just make 50 more you can fill your Christmas tree with mushrooms! |
Holly Ornament
- Materials:
- cotton or linen scraps in green and red
- 26 gauge wire (about 20 inches, longer for more berries)
- tweezers
- a small piece of cardboard or cardstock
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Cut out your leaves—two pieces for every one finished leaf—and berries. With right sides facing sew all around the leaf starting and stopping a quarter of an inch from the bottom point. |
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Clip all the corners and curves carefully. Use the tweezers to turn the leaf right side out and to poke the corners out gently. |
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Fold a third of the wire down and insert the bent end into the leaf. Place a pin at the top to secure the wire. You will be sewing a line down the middle so the wire doesn’t pull out (and to make it more leaf-like). But before you sew tuck the rawedges at the bottom of the holly leaf in. |
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Now you can sew down the middle using matching or contrasting thread. There should be wire on either side of the stitching. Scrunch up the leaf if you like and twist the wire at the base to secure. |
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To add another leaf, simply make a loop with the wire where you would like the leaf to be and attach it like the first. To make a berry, first cut out a circle of cardstock or cardboard slightly smaller than the berry pattern. Lay it on top of the fabric circle you’ve cut out and iron the edges in. |
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Now find where you want your berry to go and make a wire loop the size of your berry. Baste around the circle, close to the fold. Gather the berry around the wire loop (sneaking in a bit of stuffing if you want) and tie a knot to secure. Ta da! This would work well as mistletoe too, just use white for the berry. |
Pinecone Ornament
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Materials: - brown wool felt - cotton and linen scraps - wool or polyfil stuffing - 26 gauge wire, about 20 inches - yard darning needle |
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First cut out all the pattern pieces from your felt. Then sew the four larger pieces together along the curved edge, creating a cone shape—a pinecone shape! Turn your pinecone right side out and stuff through the opening in the bottom. Sew a running stitch around this opening and gather it slightly, but don’t cinch it closed. You want the stuffing to stay in because you will be working with the pinecone a bit more before you put the bottom piece on. |
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Pick a few pineconey fabrics and cut four 12inch by ½ inch strips from them. It’s nice if they are cut on the bias, but it’s not necessary. Cut a scalloped edge on one long side of each strip (smaller bumps look more pinecone like, but take a bit longer). |
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Now ball up all the strips in your hand and mess them up a bit to make them look more natural… |
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…Then iron them flat. |
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Pin the end of one of your strips of fabric to the tip of the pinecone and wind it around until it gets to the bottom. Take another strip and pin it in the same way making sure the bumps of this strip cover the raw edge of the last. Continue pinning until you have no more strips. If you have some empty bits on your pinecone, or would like a denser looking pinecone cut more strips and pin them on. Look at your pinecone and remember what it looks like. Now take off all the strips except the first. Sew a simple running stitch close to the straight edge all the way down the strip. If you know your toddler will find this and refuse to play with anything else, sew the strips on with a more secure stitch. One by one sew the other strips on in the same way. |
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Now hand sew the small felt circle to the bottom, covering (at least some) of the strip’s ends. To insert the wire, first thread the needle with the wire. Pull a few inches through and bend the wire so it doesn’t slip out of the needle. Poke the needle in to the seam you just sewed around the bottom and draw it all the way up through the tip of the pinecone. Pull half of the wire through, then push the needle back in close to where the needle came out. Finally, pull the needle out directly across from where it went it. You are just sewing up and down the length of the pinecone, it just is a little weird because you are sewing with wire. |
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That’s it! Wrap it around an evergreen bough, stand back and admire your work. Then go make another. |
This entry was posted
on Friday, November 21st, 2008 at 10:41 am and is filed under Handmade Holidays, Tutorials & Projects.
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I just love this ornaments! And I finnally caught them!!!! Thanks!
Thanks for the tute I love the mushroom one!
so cute!
How cute are those!
Those little mushroom ornaments are SO cute! I must go make some now!
These are so cute! Thank you so much for sharing them with us!
I love these! My favorite has always been the bird ornaments, too.
yet another great tutorial, thank you and have a great weekend!
Thay are all so adorable. I’m really loving that sweet little mushroom!!
Very neat!!!!
My family has decided we only do homemade orniments so this is great!
Geeze, ornaments – sorry!
Looks great…thanks for sharing!
Those holly leaves are awesome! A few Christmases ago, I knit flowers and leaves and made them in to brooches… I could see the same thing being done with fabric in a holly leaves and berries motif.
Those little mushrooms are so cute!
The pinecone ornament is very nice.
Adorable! Thank you
These are really cute. It would be fairly easy to adapt these once you know the basics. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks so much for your wonderful ornaments and tutorials – the pix help so much! The little mushrooms are a familiar sight in our home at Christmas as my husband is German and Germans decorate a lot with the tiny mushrooms at Christmas and New Years, they are said to bring much luck! Blessings, Ani
cute!
No way will I get these done for this Christmas, but I downloaded the patterns and the tutorial to start working on them in the summer! Thanks for all the great project ideas!
Cute, perfect ornaments. Thank you for the pattern!
love your work – the mushroom is so adorable!
I love the mushrooms
Awww… these are the cutest! I have a hard time making ornaments hang right. I love the idea of using wired ornaments. I’m going to make some for gift toppers and some for ME!
SO SO cute… love these. No way I can do them this christmas, but maybe next.
Love the drawstring holly
Too cute! and thanks to the fab instructions I actually might make something recognisable!
Thanks so much!
Oh my goodness, these are adorable!!!
Great tutorials! Love the ornaments! Thanks for the amazing ideas!
There’s something too cute about the mushrooms…
They are adorable and actually look easy enough for a beginner!
So sweet. I’m really digging those mushrooms.
The mushrooms are so cute! The leaves look like something my girls could try and make.
wow these are great!!!
I love them all, Especially the holly and plan on making a bunch of these. How wonderful. Thank you very much.
Love the mushroom!
Beautiful!!!
so cute! Thanks for this!
love the holly
The mushrooms are adorable.!
These are so cute. I’m going to whip up some of the pinecones for my Thanksgiving table this week and then keep them out to decorate my tree! Thanks!!!
I just love these. They’re so adorable. I can’t wait to make some pinecones for my kitchen. Thanks for the great ideas!
Laurie
Super cute! The kids can help make these and put them around the house for decoration!
What a great tradition to start with your family!
Those are adorable i love the holly this will be something to put on my crafting list
I love the pincones. Too Cute!!
These are cute!
Thanks for posting the link to the tutorial! Who would hve thought they were that easy??
This tute is fab! I’ve scheduled a link to this post to go live on my blog Saturday morning (Central USA time), Nov. 29. I hope it brings you a few extra clicks.
Denise
http://needlework.craftgossip.com
SOOOOOOO Cute! Thanks
I had a go at the mushroom.
http://peapods.typepad.com/peapods/2008/12/making-fabric-tree-decorations.html
Thanks so much for the tutorial!
alice