The photo to the right shows the materials needed to assemble the Blue Wizard Santa, the ornament I finished stitching almost two months ago. It is going to rain all weekend here in Chilly Hollow and since I need a nice sunny day to finish stitching Fan the little Japanese girl canvas, I will use my days off to assemble the Blue Wizard into an ornament instead.The Blue Wizard Santa is my own design, inspired by my friend Nina Goerres and her Fancy Carole Santa ornaments. Nina died last year but her memory lives on in her friends and in the new memorial award at the ANG Exhibit which will be for the best Christmas piece. Nina loved Christmas needlepoint and stitched a great deal of it herself. This little blue wizard is going to the ANG Auction and I’m hoping the money raised from it will go to the funding of Nina’s ribbon. ANG doesn’t just give out memorial ribbons like this. They have to be funded to cover the costs indefinitely. This is my way of contributing to the costs and thanking Nina for all she did for me over the years of our friendship.
Anyway, I’m ready to assemble the Blue Wizard into an ornament. I want it to be flat finished, which means no padding inside. I also want it to be light-weight, another reason to use plastic canvas as the stiffener inside instead of slightly heavier cardboard or foam core and to omit padding. So I made a color copy of the stitched piece, cut that out, and used it as a pattern to cut the plastic NP canvas (a tad smaller than the ornament) and also the back fabric (larger than the ornament). I am using a heavy cotton chintz fabric that has a sheen.
I plan to hand-stitch the front and back together around the top and sides, stuff the plastic canvas in through the bottom slit and then stitch that up. Afterwards I plan to cover the edge where the front and back meet with beads and also make a beaded loop to hang the ornament by. You can see packages of beads I pulled from The Stash to see which would work best in the image. My next step is to iron the fabric to get the wrinkles out and add beads and a blue crystal to the front of the wizard’s hat and robe. Then I’ll trim the finished canvas to about an inch from the edge, and sew the front and back sides together except across the bottom. Once the sides are stitched, I’ll insert the plastic canvas through the bottom slit, sew that together, and then start attaching beads all along the edges. I will also make a beaded loop to hang the ornament.
I hope to have all that done by tomorrow so I can start the beaded edge.
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