For the third year in a row (here’s year #1 and #2), I’m coordinating an “ornament making party” to support the mercy ministries at our church.  The ladies of the church sew felt ornaments to be given as thank yous for donations during the Advent season.

The past couple weeks, I adapted/designed and sewed these ornaments as the samples for our ornament making parties.

angel (designed by me – tutorial here), holly leaves (heavily adapted from this tutorial), gingerbread house (adapted from this tutorial), shiny bauble (from this tutorial)

It is surprising hard (seemingly impossible) to find an angel ornament design or tutorial online that is not cutesy or trite.  I wanted a representation of an angel, one that reminded us of the role that angels played in the Christmas story, but not something which trivialized or denigrated angels.  Finding nothing, I cobbled something together of my own design.  I’m relatively pleased with how it turned out except that the gold thread which brings the whole ornament together is a BEAR to sew with and about 10 times as expensive as normal embroidery floss.

I think I’m just going to sew all the angels and give the sewing of the other designs to everyone else! I would hate to ask anyone else to deal with the annoyance of that thread.  (Namely, it’s much harder to pull through the felt and the ends fray terribly so it’s pretty tough to thread the needle).  I’m willing to persevere through the annoyance but only because I did it to myself!

If you live in the area and want to join in on the sewing fun, let me know! 🙂