Christmas Matryoshkas

My ornament swap group should have received their ornaments by now, so I think it's safe to write about what I made this year. Way before I announced the swap, I'd decided to make little Matryoshkas, but I didn't really know how I'd make them. I toyed with the idea of knitting them, but sewing seemed much easier. I tried out a couple of ideas using felt, but they didn't quite look like I wanted. Then I stumbled across a pattern in a book from the library called Sew Pretty Christmas Homestyle. The pattern in the book was for little stuffed dolls to sit on a shelf, but I modified them to hang on a tree. I also significantly changed the method of construction to make them a bit easier to put together. I think they turned out pretty well.


I used craft cotton for the main parts of the dolls and felt, embroidery thread and seedbeads for their faces.

I also made some little gift bags to package them in. The bags and tags are made from brown paper (reused from packaging) and decorated with pieces of paper doily that I painted.





I've started receiving some ornaments in the post and they are fantastic! I'll do a blog post next week with pictures of all of them. In the meantime, check out the wonderful ornaments already in the flickr group for the swap.