Creating mini expressions of joy with PFAFF quilt expression 720

Little things can spark joy too! I’m not quite ready to trim a tree, but thinking about decorating one inspired my tiny makes for today. In yesterday’s post, I combined stitches to make a quick quilted gift. Today I’ll show you yet another way to use the stitches on the PFAFF quilt expression 720 to get ready for the holiday season. And today being what it is, maybe a sweet Halloween ornament will inspire you to start a whole new tradition!

I couldn’t resist! I was already thinking about mini ornaments to make for my secret sister in my quilt guild this year when the quilters at my sew day were talking about this spider stitch. Yes, many quilters in my guild love this machine and we talk about our favorite stitches when we’re together! So I went home and decided to create a Halloween mini ornament too.

Click here to see the stitch chart for the quilt expression 720

I selected the sequencing program to get just one spider to stitch out on my ornament and used a 3″ piece of white fabric from my stash. I made this ornament on point and it was easy to line up the red guides on the presser foot with the two sides of my fabric to get the spider centered.

Then I wanted to add BOO! to the ornament too, using one of the built-in fonts and the sequencing program again. The trickiest part here was finding the exclamation point – I eventually found it in the special character menu of the font. I find the stylus included with the machine makes it easy to select between menus and edit my sequencing.

Once I found the exclamation point I selected OK to return to the sequencing screen. Here I added the stop and cut threads commands so that the machine would only stitch out the word once and then secure and cut the threads on the back of the fabric leaving me a tidy finish on the front.

After that, I found a 3″ piece of batting and an orange and black geometric print for the mini ornament as well as some mini rick rack for the hanging loop.

I layered the batting on the ornament front and lined up the rick rack on the top corner facing into the ornament. Then I layered the backing fabric right side down on top and kept the whereabouts of the rick rack in mind while I stitched around the edge leaving a turning gap on one side.

Then I pulled the ornament through the gap and carefully pushed out the corners and made sure I was happy with the placement of the rick rack. I topstitched with the same purple thread I used for the other stitch elements to create one mini Halloween ornament.

I even have a recipient in mind for this mini Halloween gift! Now onto making a sewing related mini ornament 🙂 This one uses one of my favorite stitches, stitch 6.3.1.

This mini ornament started with trying out several of the built-in cross stitches on the PFAFF quilt expression 720. One of the quilters at the sew day was working on a hardanger embroidery piece and I started thinking about incorporating traditional stitches with a modern novelty stitch like the sewing machine.

I browsed the cross stitches menu and tried out a few using bright red thread on another 3″ piece of white fabric.

I created a few samples stitching some of the small cross stitches in angles across the fabric. Then I stitched a few making a grid. It started to look like a quilted nine patch block!

To make the mini ornament with the sewing machine stitch, I stitched out the stitch (6.3.1) first, then stitched the cross stitch rows – all on a 3″ piece of fabric! Too cute!

To complete the ornament I followed the same steps I did for the Halloween ornament above, except this time the ornament is not on point so I positioned the rick rack in the middle of the top edge.

I really enjoyed making mini ornaments with the built-in stitches on the PFAFF quilt expression 720 today. I hope my secret sewing sister likes her ornament 🙂 I think these mini stitched ornaments are a joy to give and receive. Come back tomorrow to see some more stitched creations!