Merry Stitchalong - Week 2

Hello and welcome to week two of the Tiny Toffee Merry Stitchalong! I´m so happy to see you!

Please notice - there is a little tutorial on how to get nice matching points on hexies that got several parts further down in this blog post!

As promised, we will go and visit the florist today! Just come ahead, step in and have a look around! Also, please meet Miss Ann - heart and soul of the North Pole Florist!

"Hello everyone! Come on in, no squeezing, there´s space for everyone! I remember a few years back we had to move all elves in here as Mrs. Clause decided it´s about time to give their elfin home a full makeover. Busy little things ...not the Clauses, the elves of course...but speaking of the Clauses, they always are busy making others happy. Mrs. Clause will pop in every now and then with a big plum cake for me, just because. She has been an awesome customer here for years and always makes sure to order a fresh new Christmas wreath for her door on a regular basis. Today I want to show you how to create your own Christmas wreath for your own front door!"

Well, Miss Ann is quite a cheerful little lady, isn´t she? So let´s get started to create Christmas wreaths with her!

Supplies:

- your favorite hexie from the Christmas Delights PDF, pieced and made into a finished hexie

- six more finished 1 inch hexies to go around your pieced hexie 

- a piece of felt for the backing

- ribbon/crochet chains for the hanger 

1. Gather your supplies. We will need seven hexies in total - your favorite paper pieced one as well as six normal ones. We also need a piece of ribbon for the hanger. Optionally you can do what I did and simply chain some stitches to build your hanger.

2. Arrange the normal hexies around the pieced one to get a layout you like. Now sew them together to build the top of the Christmas wreath. 

3. Take a piece of felt that is larger than the hexie wreath. Place wreath on top and secure it with a few pins. Now stitch around the paper pieced hexie in the middle, right in the seam. We do this to secure the fabric to the felt and because it will come out a lot more flat.

4. Slip the hanger between the fabric and felt on top of the wreath, pin. Now sew all around the hexie wreath, catching the hanger in your seam. Almost done!

5. Cut carefully around your hexie wreath and leave about 1/8 inch of felt peeking up from the back. Done!

***

Tutorial

I did promise to give some advice on how to get nice and neat matching points when you are creating hexies that are not pieced as one hexie but consist of several parts that have to be joined together.  

First I will piece all the required parts, for the Santa´s/elfin hat in the photo this would be part A and part B.

When I´m done with both of them I make sure that I ironed them properly. I will then see where exactly I have to join them together. Once you have found that "joining line" on both parts mark it. You might wonder now why exactly I´m doing this. Paper has the habit to sometimes just move out of the way, which often might not matter super much on bigger scale paper piecing but can make a huge difference when we are piecing in such a small scale. So, to be on the safe side, I will baste those two parts right along the "joining line" and then sew exactly along that basted line. This way it does not matter whether or not the paper is moving because the basting stitches will hold everything in place.

I usually don´t remove my basting stitches once I have sewn over them, but simply trim the seam allowance and then iron my hexie. As you can see - basting those single parts gives you nice matching points. It´s a little extra work that is totally worth it to be done!

Next week...

...we will visit the post owls. You will need felt and you can already prepare one of the letter hexies - if you do that please only do the foundation paper piecing part and don´t turn it into a finished hexie!

I can hardly wait to see you again next Monday!!!