Round Nativity Stuffed Ornaments

In keeping with my self-imposed goal of sewing up my panels of Christmas ornaments, I completed these six blue orbs with nativity scenes. I used blue ribbons in keeping with the serene hue of the ornaments. The ornaments did not have a marked seam allowance; the source panel merely instructed to sew ¼" from the edge. Not having a change of color at the seam allowance interface was easier, and did not result in glimpses of white along the seams if the sewing line strayed a bit. Also, not having ins and outs or places that needed to be clipped made these ornaments super easy to sew. These orbs tell the Christmas story in six scenes:

• The Angel telling Mary to expect a child
• Mary and Joseph and the donkey making the trek to Bethlehem
• The city of Bethlehem
• Jesus after birth lying in a manger with the star above
• Shepherds visiting from the fields, guided by the star
• The Three Kings arriving after following the star from afar

Here are the nativity rounds before stuffing. Hand whipstitching the curved opening after stuffing took a bit more care, but nothing unmanageable. I did thumbnail crease the edges before stitching to make it easier. Even so, the curve was not as smooth as I would have liked.  

The first one I did, with Mary and the angel, had a flat spot in the whip-stitched section. The second one I did, with Joseph, Mary, and the donkey, had a jagged bottom, not a smooth curve, but the I told myself that since the trio was traveling a rocky road, it was OK.

Then I started using Clover Wonder Clips® to keep the seam allowance uniform and not sliding inward unequally as I stitched. The clips also helped keep the opening from collapsing while I pushed in the poly-fill stuffing. This little trick worked, even better than straight pins, and by the third ornament, I was a pro at keeping the whip-stitched area as round as the machine-stitched portions.

Here is the set of six stuffed ornaments. These nativity scene ornaments are added to the angels (1/5/24 post), houses (1/17/24 post), Strawberry Shortcake (1/25/24 post), and critters (2/7/24 post) ornaments I made earlier this year. How many more panels do I have stashed away? Who knows? I keep finding them. They are fun fill-in projects that give a sense of accomplishment in a short period of time.

Random Enjoyable Days

Today, Feb 7th, was a day when the rain poured down relentlessly outside our home in California. Per the weather man, we are currently experiencing an "atmospheric river". It was a good day to stay in my sewing room tidying up and dabbling with random small projects. I'd had a quilting friend over yesterday and we dragged out a bunch of kits and fabrics to look at and audition. I leisurely took the time today to put that stuff away, also, refreshing my memory and becoming re-inspired as I did so.

I continued my dedication to my ongoing project of completing Christmas stuffed ornaments. I found two more  angels to round out the set of six that was my first project of 2024. These two were cut out and tucked away amidst other Christmas fabrics. Take heart. UFOs never go away; they just vanish to an undisclosed location to resurface at a later time. I sewed up and stuffed those two angels. Based on their hair, my guess is that they are African and Native American. Four of the set had been made with red ribbon loops and two with green ribbon loops so I chose green for these additional two to balance out the octet. I like that the green picks up  of the wreath of the angel on the left and pick ups the tree of the angel on the right. Following the photo of the pair I sewed and stuffed today, I've repeated a picture of the other six from my post at the start of 2024. They are such a bright and cheerful lot, especially spirit-lifting on such a dreary day!

I also found nestled among the panels of fabrics two forgotten critters, a lion cub holding a poinsettia and a kitten with a Christmas ball. They were already cut out and just needed to be stitched and stuffed. I obliged. I suspect other members of the set are packed away with Christmas ornaments that had been displayed this past Christmas 2023, but there are no guarantees. Those other critter ornaments may pop up from some secret mysterious location, awaiting completion. Unusual among these type of ornaments, the kitten was labeled to be stitched at the side back rather than at the bottom. I wish I had ignored those markings, since the whip stitch closure is more visible on the side than it would have been on the uneven bottom. Oh well, what's done is done.

During my sewing room browsing (cleansing?) I came across a plastic scrapbook type bin with sixteen completed blocks and seven pinwheels. These had been made from block of the month packets from JoAnn Fabrics that I'd bought in clearance at $1 each. The block of the month kit was called Spice Meadows and was originally available through April 2006. The colors are kind of a give away. I have an incomplete assortment of assembled blocks with duplicates of some. Yesterday, I became re-inspired to assemble the blocks into a quilt. My friend helped me pick out some spotted brown fabrics from my stash that I may use as sashing. There were some fabric scraps in the bin so today I sewed up an eight ~2" pinwheel. More details will follow when I actually work on this quilt but I least have the intention to do it in 2024. My real incentive is to free up that plastic bin. I have a self-imposed upper limit of 15 of these bins.

The colors of the previous set of blocks are very muted and not my normal preferred palette. I dragged out a kit title Harvest Home that I'd bought at a show (©2006 pattern included within) purely because of its clearance bargain price (~75% off!) thinking to possibly raid it for completion fabrics. Instead, when taking it out of the package and really looking at it, I became re-enamored with the kit and now want to work on it, too, as designed.

All in all, today was an enjoyable day of indulgent dabbles and foibles indoors, heedless of the puddles and dribbles outdoors.