Embroidered Christmas Ornament

Christy Baby, Needlecrafts, Sewing 11 Comments

It’s finished! I can now properly show off the embroidery module for my Bernina Aurora 44oQE. When I first got the module I made a couple of quick monograms on scrap paper just to see how it worked, but for my first actual project I wanted to make some kind of keepsake. I finally settled on a Baby’s First Christmas ornament for Allie.

Y’all, this was not easy. Sure, once the design is done you just sortof set the machine and let it go. But embroidery software (at least the versions that don’t cost thousands of dollars) is not user-friendly, and it’s all PC-based, so I had to work off an ancient laptop. It took lots of trial and error just to get the basic design done.

I’m not thrilled with the stitching, but I’m assuming that has more to do with the fact that I had to scale the designs to fit my ornament then with the quality of the designs I used or the machine. The practice monograms I did were bigger and looked much nicer. Oh, and the bobbin thread. I bought a cheapie spool from Joann’s and it broke every time. I finally used bobbins of my main thread and it worked fine.

Assembly was another challenge. I initially tried sewing right sides together and turning it inside out for cleaner seam, but it just ended up looking wrinkly and kindof plain. So I re-did it with raw pinked seams and I like it much better. I think that along with the slightly sloppy stitching make it look more hand-made.

The stocking was a free download from embroiderydesigns.com, and the frame is Lynnie Pinnie.