Tutorial: Make this fabulous, decadent crazy quilted stocking ornament

This is a quick and fun ornament for the holidays. Obviously it’s quicker if you’ve done crazy piecing before, but if you haven’t it’s a great place to start. Enjoy!

Materials:

• One piece of muslin – larger than the template (print out)
• One larger (a little larger than the template) piece of velvet or satin.
• Fabric scraps including cotton, silk, satin, rayon velvet, laces, silk-like polyester, taffeta, etc . Heavy fabrics can be hard to stitch through – so keep that in mind, but otherwise pick fabrics you like.
• A variety of needles – always pick a needle thicker than your thread and appropriate for trying to go through the fabric you’re using.
• Strong sewing thread (or beading thread) any color for piecing (it’s under your work, so it doesn’t matter what color.
• Embroidery thread – use your favorite, mix them up! Metallic, silk, cotton, whatever is your preference. I find fancier threads look better on fancy fabric, but it’s up to you (no rules!)
• Embellishments, including beads, charms, appliques.
• Small length 3-4 inches of cording or ribbon for loop to hang stocking
• Printable PDF pattern
• Printable Instructions (same as below)

First, put aside any “rules” you’ve learned from regular quilting or embroidery. It doesn’t matter how straight your stitches are and nothing is straight or lined up in crazy quilting. Start fresh and be creative!

The following project can be all be done on the machine, but I think it’s easier with a small piece to do it all by hand. The choice is yours!

Start by copying the pattern onto a piece of muslin – or any inexpensive cotton or flannel cloth. Color doesn’t matter because this will be underneath all of your work. Leave approximately a one inch seam allowance all of the way around. You can trace with any sort of pen or pencil – this is all going to be covered up.
Pick out one piece of fabric to be the center where you will start piecing. Place that down on the fabric. You can baste around the edges, but I find unless it’s really slippery you can usually just hold it until you piece the edges around it. A five sided shape (Judith Baker Montano’s approach) gives you some nice angles , but you can also use a four or three sided shape.
This can be a good place to use a favorite fabric with a motif or a piece of embroidery or cross stitch, remember to leave a little room for a seam allowance. Usually you put this piece in the middle, but as you get more experience you can start wherever you want! Then look at your colors and try to decide how to get some contrast between pieces – you don’t want to piece similar colors together (unless doing a monochrome look) or you wont get a nice contrast.

Pick out your second piece of fabric.

Take this second piece of fabric and place it right sides together along one edge of the first patch. You can pin it if you want, but you can also just hold it with your fingers and begin a running stitch through both pieces of fabric – using the muslin as a base. You don’t need to backstitch at the end because you will be sewing another patch over the end but do use knots at each end – it will keep your patches from slipping.

Iron pieces flat. If you have a seam, flatten in the direction of the thinner fabric so it lays nicely. Be carefulusing steam if you’re ironing velvet – I often just hold the steam and iron over the piece to flatten it. As you’re going along, you’re going to want to cut off any excess pieces so you can see the pattern and see where you want to place your next patch.

The third patch of fabric is placed right sides together along another edge of the first patch and across the second patch.

Be sure to trim the seams and the excess fabric underneath to reduce bulk and minimize shadows under thin fabric.The rest of the fabric is placed right sides together where you want the seam to be, start by putting a patch on each edge of the first patch, then add them randomly – each seam is a straight line which can run over several previous seams

One technique I used is here. Where I stitch two smaller pieces together (to break up a long piece and then piece it on the crazy quilt as one piece of fabric.


Continue adding patches until your pattern is covered. When you’re done, you should have a variety of sizes in your work – this makes embellishment more fun – but if you don’t that’s ok.

If you have a spot where your seams didn’t overlap enough, you have several choices: you can applique the edge down, you can use the corner of a hankie as a “patch” or you can embellish right over it!

Mistakes are sometimes happy accidents in crazy quilting.

When you have finished piecing, stitch a running seam all the way around the pattern. This helps keep the fabric from moving around and also gives you a boundary for your stitching.

Now you’re ready to embellish.

Directions are not required here because you can do whatever you want. Use online stitch dictionaries to pull out your favorite stitches and then create combinations, mix and match your threads and feel free to add beads and ribbon.

Some of my favorite online stitch dictionaries:
http://inaminuteago.com/stitchindex.html
http://www.prettyimpressivestuff.com/stitches/index.htm
http://www.fidella.com/webstitch/needle_stitch.html

Sharon Boggon has a fabulous guide on stitch combinations, so if you are more advanced, visit for some fabulous ideas.

I have finished off the top with some fringe I had around, but you could also use fur, lace or another fabric or any keep it all crazy quilted to the top.