Linda's Review Of Vintage Birdhouse Embroidery by Carol L. Steffensen Of Chickadee Hollow Designs

Several years ago I bought a couple of creative embroidery and stitchery patterns for making ornaments that I wanted to make into little pictures and have been trying to find some time to complete them.  I decided that with the beautiful Spring weather this would be the perfect time to work on some of them outside.

I decided to start with a Vintage Ornament #6 embroidered birdhouse ornament from Chickadee Hollow Designs as it was cute and looked relatively easy to complete.  The pattern included the design on pre-printed pre-colored fabric, as well as a basic embroidery stitches sheet and sheet of basic instructions for completing their ornaments.

I had decided ahead of time that I wanted to frame my ornament as a small picture instead of using it as an ornament.



The pattern included a basic instructions sheet which was a summary sheet for competing all of their ornaments and not specific to the vintage birdhouse ornament as well as a sheet showing basic embroidery stitches. It was left up to the user to choose which color floss to use and where and which embroidery stitch to use and where.

The instructions called for positioning the design over a piece of Warm-N-Natural batting and fastening this with small safety pins then embroidering the ornament. The pre-printed pre-colored fabric was fine except it was so small and the design so close to the edge that it was impossible to fit within any embroidery hoop.

My experience has always been that embroideries always come out better when stretched in an embroidery hoop so I chose to baste my to a standard felt square so that I could put in into a small square embroidery frame as shown in the pictures below:

When my embroidery piece was done I removed it from the embroidery square hoop and cut it along the brown dotted lines about 1/4" from the edge of the birdhouse outline as shown in the pictures below:

The instructions also said to finish the piece according to the finishing option of your choice. I decided to blanket stitch my ornament to one layer of quilt batting and a back piece of felt as shown in the pictures below:

Using the embroidered birdhouse as a guide I cut out a piece of batting and a piece of felt for the backing and then layered them as shown in the picture below:

I had decided to use red floss to blanket stitch around the edges of my vintage birdhouse ornament and like how it turned out as shown in the picture below:

As mentioned previously I was going to put my finished vintage birdhouse ornament in a small picture frame and had decided to use decorative paper as a background for my picture. The choice was between an evergreen colored background or a bright red colored background. I chose the bright red colored background as shown in the picture below:

I had chosen a creme colored wood frame for my finished piece as I thought it really complimented the color of the pre-printed fabric and was thrilled with the way my Vintage Birdhouse Ornament turned out.

It took me 10 hours to complete this picture including the framing and was thrilled with the way it turned out. I hope you like it as much as I do.