Home for the holly~daze ornament tutorial

~For weeks now I have had visions of Christmas tree ornaments dancing through my head. (Hopefully I will get a few more on here before it is too late). For this particular ornament my inspiration was coming from the fact that I have been particularly drawn to images of houses and other random protective structures. Probably like most of Y'all I have been busily rearranging my home to accommodate all the things that crowd in during the month of December; the tree, and Christmas knick knacks, cookies , xtra blankets and pillows( fort making and couch cuddling)the plants that need to come in from outside and of course the toys. But other than the real life stuff I have been soaking up images of chicken coops and barns and such . I have been watchin all those '60s Christmas cartoons and loving the their depictions of little villages I have also been re- lovin' the Fauvists particularly

Henri Mattise, Marc Chagall and Paul Gauguin with his lovely birds, boobies and hutsTheir palettes always set me on fire and get me excited abut playing with color!
So that is a little peak into my brain as I started these little houses. This project is a total scrap pile buster which is always nice to do right around the new year. These little houses are great gifts either alone or you can attach them to the top of a wrapped gift or to a jar of preserves or pickles or a plate of cookies! HAVE FUN!!!!

materials
felt for backing
heat and bond lite
fabric scraps
iron
scissors
ruler
pencil
chalk
buttons
trim ribbon or rick /rack for loop
needle
thread
sewing machine(optional)

process
1. print or design your own template. You can drag the pattern to your desktop and print at 100 % to get the size I have made or change it according to your desires.
Print 2 if you want to cut the roof off for that template (i just used my original and winged the bottom edge)



2. Cut your felt backings. I like to make stuff like this in bunches so I cut all of them at once. chalk is my favorite marking tool on felt. Working in bunches makes this type of project a great way of hashing out my color palettes and it is a great way to loosen up your creative juices.
3. cut your heat and bond for your houses. I use one piece of fabric for the entire hose then just build the roof and other trimmings on top of that base. To make this quick and fun I lay my house template on a sheet of heat and bond ( pare side) . I marked using a ruler rectangle just large enough to hold the template.I then cut all those rectangles out.
4. attach your heat and bond to your base fabric. This is a freeing exercise. I just went through my humongasarous pile of scraps and picked some of my favorites to use as the base. I have my rectangles all measure out so I can tell easily if I have enough scrap. I also use this as a opportunity to pull out roof and trim scraps that might look lovely with my houses. Using your iron attach the heat and bond to the fabric according to the manufactures instructions. remember HOT IRON but no steam.

5. Trace and cut your template from your fabric rectangles. A lovely kick back of the heat and bond is the paper backing which makes tracing templates a breeze. I always use a pencil here.Cut em out
6. Make your house a home. At this point I start focusing on the details of each house.
I continue to work each one individually. Make the roof. simply trace the top part of the hose on a heat and bond backed scrap and attach it to the house.
then add windows, people, chickens, buttons, ...whatever you like.
7.Stitch your trims. remove your paper backing first then attach buttons now and your loop at the top . I used about 6 inches for my loops.
8.Attach and stitch( if you are feeling it) the felt backing to your house. As your probably know I usually put everything through the sewing machine...my machine likes to be a part of everything.This is not really required I just like things all stitchy.
9.Now go little lass and Spread your creative holiday cheer....