Ornament Instructions

It took me quite a while to figure out what I did on this thing - where to begin, etc. It seems, after some careful study, that the best way is to start on the inner part of the border, in order to place it well on the canvas and leave space for tracing the holly - or whatever else you might want to put there.

I'm showing the picture again, but with arrows showing the importance of being careful of placement of lines when tracing - so as to leave those small spaces OPEN when stitching. It's very simple once you've formed the habit, and will make stitching so much easier for you.

As I said in the previous post, the canvas has little sparkles already built in - but you could easily just do an open canvas stitch with blending filament to imitate it - or even paint on a very thin, watered down layer of Liquitex "Liqui-gems" which is what some designers use to make snow sparkle on painted canvases. (this is T-shirt paint from the craft store).

The ornament is app. 5 3/4" from point to point, and then I added a little bit when I folded it under, as I thought it looked better with a border. Your canvas needs to be cut in a 9" square.

Stitch the inner border, at least, following the scan of the canvas and the chart - and then trace the drawing carefully on to the canvas (place it under the canvas square) centered. I sized the tracing so it should fit as it is when you print it out.

For stitching, I used YLI Ribbon floss in Honey/Copper instead of using metallic gold, as I like the effect better for this than metallic gold.
The berries are "bump" stitches (different sizes) with something red and sparkling - I did this one a number of years ago, so can't really tell what it is. Perhaps Flair. The leaves are done with two shades of green Flair - but cotton floss or the new DMC Satin Floss would work beautifully.

My idea of "counted canvas" is to count the stitches onto the canvas with a pen, so as not to have to think or count while stitching. You can see there are 14 little pointed things on the inner border - easy.


On the chart, you can see the gold stitches marked - do these first, and then add the beads. I placed the red and green ones end to end rather than side by side as I usually do, as this makes them appear to be a string of beads. I used my favorite Sundance beads in the hexagonal cut for extra sparkle.

The blue circles indicate the gold beads.

This is an easy project to do - make several, and enjoy!