Tutorial: Family Goal Ornament

This week is a big one for sharing new traditions. Since New Year’s found me in a bit of a funk (if by a bit of a funk you mean clinical depression), and Atti’s birthday comes right on top of it, you get two traditions in one week. A real sign that the dark days are behind me.

Like a lot of people, I’ve occasionally tried to do a “word of the year.” One word that can inspire my endeavors for the whole year, that I can focus my energies towards. But like most people, I’d forget what the word was about three weeks after I chose it, and out would go all those good intentions.

So in wanting to start my year of seasonal traditions, I wanted to revisit this. Instead of a personal word of the year, I decided that we should have a family goal. So we all sat down and thought about what this year would bring us and chose a word we wanted to use to set our goals around. Since this year is bringing us big opportunities and big changes, we chose “courage.”

To make sure that I wouldn’t forget our word, I wanted to make something that would keep it visible. And I loved the thought that by making something, I’d be keeping a family record of these goals. So I went for something that would be heirloom quality. Which in my world always means crosstitch. I made up a pattern with our goal on one side, and our team name and year on the other, and then cut them into a leaf shape.

I put the two embroidered pieces back to back with two thin layers of batting in between them for stability, and then stitched an overlock zig zag stitch all the way around the outside, tucking a loop of ribbon in before sewing up the top so it can act as a hanger.

This is the image I created to crosstitch, which you are welcome to borrow. To make a pattern out of it there are a whole bunch of awesome online pattern generators, and here’s one I think is particularly good.

Want me to talk you through it step by step? Here you go!

Need to learn to crosstitch? I’ll walk you through that step by step too!

I really love the thought that as the years go by we’ll have more and more of these leaves, with more and more values that we’ve grown together as a family. These will become the visual representation of the family tree we’re building, one day at a time.