Tutorial: Fabric Puff Ornament

We had a great time last week at the San Diego craft night and book signing with Marisa Lynch from New Dress a Day (BTW, those of you who live in the San Diego area should visit Kettle Coffee and Tea and try out their delicious drinks and treats, yum!). Next week Marisa will be posting about the event and sharing lots of photos, so stay tuned!

For those of you who couldn't make it to the craft night, here is the tutorial for the fabric ornaments that we made at the event. In honor of Marisa's visit we repurposed thrift store clothing by using fabric from old shirts, skirts, etc. to create these. This is a great project for any unwanted clothing or fabric scraps that you have laying around!

A printable PDF version of these instructions can be found here.

Here's how you can make your own Fabric Puff Ornament:

Supplies

• 2" styrofoam ball
• 75 2-inch squares of fabric (if you're using new fabric 1 fat quarter is the perfect amount)
• Ribbon
• Straight pins (also called dressmaker pins)
• White glue
• Thimble (optional...BTW I found these awesome Thimble-it thimbles that are basically little pieces of adhesive plastic that you stick on your finger like a sticker. They give you a lot more dexterity than a traditional thimble. They come in packs of 64 and are available in the sewing section at Michaels.)
• Fray check (optional)

Step 1: Begin by making your fabric squares into "puffs." Take a pin and poke it through each of the four corners of a fabric square (see photos below), repeat with all 75 of your fabric squares.

Poke the pin through the right side of the fabric at one corner of a fabric square.

Working clockwise around the square, poke the pin through the right side of the fabric at the next two corners.

When you reach the last corner, poke the pin through the wrong side of the fabric at the corner.

Ta-da! You have created a puff!

Step 2: Once you have turned your fabric squares into puffs you are ready to assemble the ornament. Take one puff and dip the point of the pin into some white glue. Next, stick the pin into the styrofoam ball.

Step 3: Repeat step 2, placing the pins of each puff about a half inch apart, until the entire styrofoam ball is covered and no styrofoam is visible. If you are using several colors of fabric make sure that you are distributing the the different colored puffs evenly over the surface of the ornament.

Step 4: When your ornament is completely covered with puffs, it's time to add a ribbon for hanging. Cut a 6" lenght of ribbon and overlap the ends to form a loop. Use 2 straight pins dipped in glue to attach the overlapping ends of the ribbon to the styrofoam ball.

Step 5: Using a decorative ribbon, tie a bow around the base of the ribbon loop. Trim the ends of the ribbon and use some fray check to keep the ends from fraying.

Step 6: It's time to decorate your tree!

*My mom and I used to use this technique to make wreaths when I was younger. If you use a styrofoam or packed straw wreath as your core and cover it with "fabric puffs" you can create a beautiful Christmas wreath...but it will take a bit longer to finish than this ornament! :)

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