I made heirloom photo ornaments

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Grandparents can be hard to find gifts for. My parents love photo gifts but they only have so much wall and table space for frames and calendars and books. I found an idea HERE and I thought it would make a perfect grandparent Christmas gift since my parents have the type of tree with all the ornaments accumulated over a lifetime. I already had most of the necessary supplies. I made ornaments in 2019 for my parents and a set in 2020 for my in-laws.

First I gathered photos of my parents/in-laws as children and young adults and their parents as youth and young adults. I raided family history websites and solicited other relatives I knew had images. The first set of ornaments I made I used an app on my phone to erase the backgrounds but it was a bit tedious. I learned from the experience and for my in-laws I educated myself on how to do the same thing in Photoshop. I also digitally drew outlines about 1" around each image to make sure each image had enough room for a boarder/seam allowance. Once my images were ready I placed them in layouts in Illustrator so I could maximize the number of photos I could get on each sheet of fabric. 

I googled around to find out how to print photos on fabric. I ended up using Bubble Jet Set 2000 to presoak my muslin, wrung out and let air dry, cut fabric into 8.5 x 11 rectangles and ironed them onto the waxy side of 8.5 x 11 sheets of freezer paper. I fed these through my inkjet printer to print the photos in black and white, let air dry for 30 minutes, peeled off the fabric, then heat set them with a dry iron. I didn't do any other step to ensure the ink set since I don't anticipate these ornaments will ever be washed.

The first ornaments I made I cut out the images before embroidering details which was a mistake because then I couldn't properly stretch them in my hoop. For the second batch I left the sheets of fabric intact, did all the embroidery, then cut them out. 

I sewed each photo to a matching piece of untreated muslin right sides together with a loop of ribbon sandwiched between the layers at the top of the photo leaving 1-2" opening at the bottom for turning and stuffing. I clipped curves and corners and turned the pieces right side out, pressed them, stuffed with polyfil till they were as firm as I liked, then sewed the holes shut with my machine. Oh, I also wrote the name and date of the person or people in each ornament for my in-laws ornaments with a permanent fabric pen. I forgot to do that with my parents' ornaments. They know the people in the photos, but someday if those ornaments are passed to someone else the new owners may not know. 

They all turned out great! My sister-in-law said I won gifting this year 😂.


In progress


All done!


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