Here is a simple tutorial for making these gorgeous applique ornaments. I absolutely love making these each year to personalize for quick gifts as well as to use to designate packages for my friends and family. They make wonderful keepsakes and you can use all kinds of beautiful custom materials as the background to celebrate the people in your life and their interests!
Here are the things you will need to make these on your own embroidery machine:
- Design File for Blank Applique Ornament from www.designsbybabymoon.com . There are three variations in this ONE file set, so you can get slightly different looks all from a single file set!
- Embroidery Vinyl for the front and back of your ornament, 2 4inch by 4 inch pieces, like the quality tested embroidery vinyl from www.MyPunkbroidery.com.. You will also need a 2 inch x 4 inch strip of coordinating vinyl to go across the middle of the ornament for where you will add a name or the year.
- Cutaway Embroidery Stabilizer
- Coordinating Embroidery Thread
- Odif 505 Spray or embroidery safe tape
- Metal Eyelet or small 3/16 inch or 4-5 mm grommet, punch and eyelet setting tool
- Scissors
- Coordinating ribbon to tie a bow at the top
Let’s Get Started!
In your embroidery software, merge in the lettering or the year that you want into your ornament design. You need this lettering to be placed BEFORE the eyelet. In this photo of my screen of my Embrilliance Embroidery software, you can see that I added lettering right in the middle of the design of the Straight Lines variation, after the lines stitch the tackdown for the applique area and before the eyelet placement stitching.
Save this design as a new stitch file in the format that your embroidery machine will read and take the design to your embroidery machine on a USB, card or however you send things to your machine.
At your embroidery machine, run the placement for the design on cutaway stabilizer in your 4×4 hoop
Next, lay down a piece of the background vinyl over that placement stitch so that the vinyl completely covers the placement stitching. You need enough to be able to cut a nice 1/8″ or 3-4 mm border after you are done stitching.
Run the placement lines so you can see where to lay the contrast strip for the name area in the center of the ornament.
Float the contrasting vinyl over that placement strip and run the tackdown stitches, which may be one or two steps, if you have the decorative version of the applique ornament or just the Straight Lines version. After the edges are done, you can trim the applique piece with your scissors across the top and bottom of the strip. You do not need to worry about the sides as they will be trimmed when you are finishing the ornament.
Run any lettering that you added.
After your lettering is complete, float another piece of the background material on the back of your hoop. You could also use a coordinating vinyl or something extra sparkly and fun. You can secure the backing vinyl with a bit of tape or with some embroidery safe spray like the 505 spray from Odif.
Replace the hoop back on the machine, and run the placement stitch for the eyelet area. Then run the final outline, which secures the front and back together and hides the stitching in between the layers.
Remove your project from the machine and from the hoop, and carefully trim around the outer stitching, leaving about 1/8″ or 3-4 mm.
Punch a hole in the eyelet placement area and set in an eyelet or small grommet.
Tie a ribbon through the hole and you are DONE with a gorgeous personalized ornament that will surely bring some holiday joy!!
I hope that you found this tutorial helpful! You can check out all my ornament designs at Designs by Babymoon and I encourage you to try something new and see what happens! It’s fun to try things out and be surprised at what you can make with the wonderful tools and materials we have at our disposal!
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