Ornaments

This Christmas, I spent time with my brother and his family. I don’t remember how we got the idea, but my sister-in-law and I decided to make a bunch of fabric Christmas tree ornaments as gifts for friends and extended family. The pattern was pretty simple and we were able to enlist the help of the oldest four kids.

There are several fabric combinations. For the colored fabrics, one is a cotton African wax print (I think from Congo), one is an American cotton print, and one is a hand-dyed batik on a very slippy nylon fabric mix from Zambia. We also had three kinds of white fabric: a set of ancient linen napkins that were faded and slightly stained, and two kinds of white-on-white cotton prints. The linen and nylon combo was the most challenging to work with. It just kept slipping everywhere! But it was also my favorite final product.

I am notoriously bad at remembering to take pictures as I go, so these photos are a poor representation of both the process and the product. The final ornaments have a cute button in the middle and a ribbon loop to hang them on the tree.