Ready to make the sweetest embroidered family photo ornament? I saw a blog post with an almost identical project, didn’t save it, and never could find it again. I’ve searched with a few key words and not found it, but if you have seen this before, please tell me where and I’ll link my original inspiration. They just sketched out their little leaf flourishes but I have a free pattern for the overlay you can download!

I think this would be a lovely family tradition to stitch up each year, what better way to celebrate Christmas than looking back on past winters? It would be easy to customize the style according to your tree or your recipient, if you’re gifting, by painting the hoop, adding trim, and choosing different colors.

[Some links are affiliate links, marked with a *, shopping through these gives me a small kick back at no cost to you. Thanks for supporting Swoodson Says! More info in ‘legal stuff’ in the menu]

I stitched up this version for a friend, isn’t her family adorable?

I am loving these little embroidery hoops for ornaments, you can see what I’ve made with them so far: an embroidered snowflake and a snow globe photo shaker.

How To Make An Embroidered Family Photo Ornament

Supplies

• Printable fabric sheets* (and an inkjet printer)
• 4″ embroidery hoop*
• 1/4 yard 906f pellon fusible sheerweight*
• Embroidery floss – I used DMC  3345 green and DMC 816 red
• Embroidery needles*
• Downloadable leaf/year pattern –PDF pattern or PNG files
• 6″ felt scrap square
• Hot glue gun

Steps

Step 1- You’ll want to edit your photo into a size that has the portion you’d like visible roughly 4.44″ high and wide (400 pixels), there needs to be approximately 6″ of a square, leaving enough material to tuck up and glue, but the 4.44″ circle is what will be visible; I digitally edited my photo into a circle that size using Picmonkey and added an overlay but you could also resize it and print it as a square easily. Print on an inkjet printer, and peel off the backing.

I used a ‘faint’ version of the vines and year, placing it on top of the picture I was printing since it would show up. If you have a darker picture or would prefer it, you could also print your photo and then print the vines on to Fabri-Solvy for a transfer method, you can see here how to use it and download the PNG or PDF files above. If you want to add your own numbers in an overlay, I used a free font Winterthur Condensed in size 41.

Step 2-Apply the fusible interfacing to the wrong side of the photo fabric, following the packaging’s instructions

Step 3- Use the embroidery hoop and tighten up the fabric until it is taut. Stitch the design! I used a single strand back stitch for the plain curve and a detached lazy daisy stitch for each ‘leaf’. I used a double strand with tiny back stitches on the numbers.

Step 4- Trim around the edges of the fabric in a circle, leaving roughly 1/2″ around all sides. You’re then going to pull the fabric up in tucks, hot gluing it to the back edge of the embroidery hoop.

Step 6-Use the outer circle to trace and cut out a larger felt circle and hot glue it on the back, hiding the ragged edges and backing.

Step 7- Tie embroidery floss to hang the ornament and enjoy.

The post How To Make An Embroidered Family Photo Ornament appeared first on Swoodson Says.

©