17 Feb

Sewing Tutorial: Simple Chinese Ornament

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Simple Chinese New Year Ornament

Picture 1 of 3 (Click arrow for more pictures)

Chinese celebrates Lunar New Year or Chinese New Year for 15 days. Today is the 4th day of Chinese New Year and traditionally we don’t visit friends and relatives during the 3rd and 4th day since it is believed that we could get into argument or bad luck if do so. I was pretty much relax at home eating cookies, cakes, mandarin oranges and the left-over from the eve (chú xī) [opppsss... hope I won't gain too much weight during this festival :p] Well, I did another simple sewing of an ornament to decorate my pussy willows using silk and red packet. Unlike the previous Locker Hook Ornament, the process to sew 1 of this simple ornament took only about 10 minutes. If you make a few in one shot, the average time spend on them will be shorterned.

This design is not confined to only Chinese New Year ornament, you can modify it to suit any festive season of your choice by just changing the material used, eg. red and green fabric with a white snow flake or christmas tree picture for Christmas, pumpkin or black spider for Halloween, sarees chiffon fabric with a Diwali lamp for Deepavali, batik with a Ketupat or rice cake for Hari Raya, etc., the possibilities in endless….

Hope you find this tutorial useful

Materials you need to prepare are as follow:

1. Chinese silk, 11.5×11.5 cm or 4.5″x4.5″, 2 pcs.
2. Interfacing, 11.5×11.5 cm or 4.5″x4.5″, 1 pc.
3. Chinese knots and dangle fringe, 1 set
4. Short length of ribbon 1cm width, 2 pcs.
5. Red packet (红包封)

Arrange the ribbons, Chinese knots and dangle fringe as shown.
make a few stitches to secure them in place.

Iron the interfacing onto the wrong side of another piece of silk with low heat.
Place it on top with right side facing each other.
Sew them up with 6mm (1/4″) seam allowance.
Leave an opening of about 3cm for turning the work inside out.

Carefully grab and pull the Chinese knots and dangle fringe out from the opening, then pull the rest of the right side out.
Use a pointy but blunt tool to tweak the corner so that it is at right angle and it looks square.
Iron the work with low heat.

Cut the red packet to the correct size and slot it in between the ribbons.
Hang it to decorate