Vintage Santa Ornaments - Whiplash

Even though I gave these away as gifts, ornaments are really decorations, so I am entering this in the decoration category for Whiplash.

These ornaments are kind of like me since they are a little bit techy and a little bit crafty.

To make these ornaments, I used some images of beautiful vintage Christmas postcards that Pat Sabin scanned and shared on her web page here. She clearly outlines her conditions of use here.

I used 5 of the vertical images, shrunk them to 2.5 inches tall, reversed them and printed them on iron-on transfer paper. That's the techy bit.

Here's the crafty bit:
Earlier this year I dyed a few white, flat sheets with different teas thinking that I would use them for future projects. The tea color really added to the vintage feel of the ornament. I used a lighter brown color tea stained fabric for the iron on side, and a slightly darker, reddish tea color for the back.

It was important that I use a reasonably light colored fabric for the iron-on side - I needed to be able to see where the image was from the reverse while sewing.

Once I had the ironed on images, and backs cut out, I cut 6" lengths of lace/ribbon for the hanging loop.



I pinned one image face down on a back piece with the ribbon looped in between, and sewed it like a little pillow leaving the bottom open to flip it.

Trim it, flip it, stuff it, stitch it up, and Voila!







One of the best things about this project was that I happened to have everything on hand: the iron-on transfer printer paper, fabric, lace and thread. And this time, I remembered to save an ornament for myself. My favorite was the image with the Santa dressed in the long, green, starred coat (a pre-Coca-Cola Santa). My photos don't do justice to the fabulous, vintage images.