Ornament of the Month 2020 - January

Welcome to the first Ornament of the month for 2020! I'm sure you are wondering what shape this year's ornament will be! The good news is, as already mentioned in the overview post: no holes! The second bit of good news is that there is a tutorial for this year's shape too! It's here. But first some other things...

The fabric I'm using this year is Jodyri Designs Year of Fabric Club - Neutrals - April 2017 18ct opalescent Aida "Stormy Seas"

As you may remember from the information post I'm using the colours of the month as my theme this year. The colours of the month for January are black, dark blue, and dark red. I picked Kreinik #4 Very Fine Braid 060 - Midnight as my sparkly thread and DMC 823 as the thread to go with it as I didn't want to use black thread for my ornament - you can if you wish but it's just a personal preference. The beads I chose are TOHO TR-11-82 Metallic Nebula. For the cord and tassel I used one of the many craft threads my fiancé has given me over the years (I'll never run out! <3 ) that happened to match almost perfectly.

Since not everyone likes really dark colours I thought that you might prefer Kreinik #4 Very Fine Braid 051HL with DMC 824.

This year's ornament is again something special: it's made up of two parts!  There is a 10 x 10 stitch part and a 20 x 20 stitch part. You can chose to do them together as a single ornament or apart. You can make tiny ornaments for a tiny table tree, a slightly larger one for a slightly larger table tree or make it a double ornament and use it on a bigger tree! Even as a double ornament you have options!  You can do the smaller part on top, or the larger part on top - it's entirely up to you. On 14ct Aida / 28ct evenweave they are of course larger than on 18ct Aida / 36ct evenweave. The backstitch of some of the ornaments this year may make stitching over one difficult - not that I think many people would be able to stitch a 10 x 10 pattern over one and still be able to assemble it.

This is how I stitched the two parts of the ornament on my fabric.

This is the completed ornament - with cord and tassel it's 7" / 17.78 cm high.

And because my tree is still up I couldn't resist auditioning it in the tree!

You can find the pattern here
You can find the tutorial here

That's all for today - I still have the Finish It In... 2019 post to make but I'm just so tired and it took me most of the day to make the tutorial so I'm calling it enough for today. I'll write it soon though!