How to Make a No-Sew Scandinavian Star Ornament | Shabby Fabrics Tutorial

Hi it's Jen from Shabby Fabrics. It's the Christmas season and so I'm excited to share with you one of the ornaments that I figured out how to make with some fabric. Now this is not anything I created. This Scandinavian kind of weave woven ornament has been around for hundreds of years and I thought you know if they're making these out of paper I know we can make it out of fabric and I thought it'd be fun to have it double-sided so you had two different looks. Now the other thing that you could do besides having Christmas ornament you can make it slightly larger and have a tree topper. I know lots of people when they downsize kind of have a smaller Christmas tree and most Christmas tree toppers are maybe a little bit overwhelming. So this way you can make your tree topper any size that you would want it to be. Now beyond Christmas let's say you're decorating for winter you could be using maybe some beautiful blues and this could be kind of representing snowflakes. So kind of think beyond Christmas this could go well into winter and be beautiful there too. Let me jump right into this and show you how easy this is. We're going to be making the ornament together today in this size. The first thing that you will want to use is you'll need are two pieces of fabric that are six and a half inches square each. You could of course use the same fabric but I loved these two different fabrics so I chose two different ones and I have two pieces of Ultra Bond. This is Heaton Bond Ultra. I wanted the heaviest bond that I could get. The first thing that I did past that was I simply ironed a piece of the fusible webbing on the back side of each page. Let me take this away. The next thing you'll do is just fold that back, peel that paper away and you'll see the shine representing just how much glue is on here. Now what I've got in front of me is an applique pressing sheet and that's really just to protect my workspace. I have found that if I get glue or anything on the applique pressing sheet it will just roll off there and not damage the applique pressing sheet and it keeps my workspace clean. Now you would place these right sides together, take that to your pressing mat, covering that with your applique pressing sheet and go ahead and give a good iron. Now I'll save just save us some time. I did that ahead of time of course and then squared this up using my six inch ruler so that it's six inches square. Remember we started with six and a half. Then you will cut those into half inch strips, which I've done ahead of time. You will get 12 half inch strips. Let's move right into the assembly of how to make these amazing ornaments. Now you will, there's two sides. Six pieces are used for this side and six pieces are used for this side. So you'll just grab six aside for the first half and the second half is made exactly the same way. So let's get going. To begin with we're going to fold two of the pieces in half and just do a finger crease. I have a hot glue gun with me. It's just a typical glue gun with an ordinary glue stick and I'm going to put just a little bit of glue right in that metal section. I'm going to place that so I'm creating a cross. Now I can see underneath to my crafting mat but I'm just going to double check. I do want this to be fairly square so I can see I have 90 degree corners here. That's exactly what I want. Let's take this back up here. Now you need to move quick because you are moving working with hot glue. So this piece goes over the top. I'm going to lay the next one right next to that one and this one. I might have grabbed one short. I need one more. Oh no, I don't. There they are. I have six. I got myself confused. So I'm just lining up the top and I have about, I would say, under an eighth of an inch spacing. That spacing is really kind of your discretion but whatever spacing you choose, go ahead and keep it. Now I'm going to roll that back and put just a little dab of glue right there and bring that back into position. If you get just a little bit of glue, don't worry. You'll be able to kind of just roll that away. It doesn't take very much glue. Okay, that's the beginning. Now this one I need to weave here. You can see how that I'm kind of making just a basket weave. Again, I'm looking for about that same spacing, making sure my strips are the same, matching up on the ends. I'm going to do the same here. So snug that up. Once you're happy with that, you'll just lift up these little flaps and you're just going to glue in here too. So here's my grid. Great. Okay, now you're going to turn it so you have an X. This side here, I'm going to turn. I'm going to place a dab of glue all the way from one to the other versus just a little dab here. I want to make sure when I pivot this that those form a point and they're fully glued all the way across because that, as you can see, you don't really want those flaps rising up. You can always go back and glue them again. I'm going to rotate that. Let's do it again. I'm going to lift this up and turn. If you get some glue, I just kind of pinch it off and roll it. It's not that hot. And we'll do it again. And you're doing that on all four, I guess I would call them, cardinal directions. Your north, east, south, and west. And you repeat that with your other six strips. Exactly the same. Exactly the same. Just like that. Now I want you to notice that when I made this ornament, I wanted this to alternate where the tips were a different color. I thought that was interesting. If you decide that you like that look, what you will do, in fact, I'm going to make the next set again and I'm going to replicate this ornament. If you like the ornament that has the same on both sides, you're going to replicate this exactly. If you're going to do the ornament like this, we're going to go ahead and build our other grid with the green up exactly the same way. Establishing our center just like we did and building our weave just like we did. When I come back, this half will be done and we'll put our ornament together. So we're back. We are going to make this ornament here. So that's how by making them opposite. Now what we do is we will place this just like this. So I want you to see what I did. So if we place it like this, they're going to be stacked on top of that. But if we turn that and it fits in the gap, that's how we will create this. And notice how I'm going to tuck those little extensions underneath the loop. I'm going to start with those four first and gluing those down. So I'm going to flip this over and I'll show you what this looks like. I'm going to be adding a dab of glue right here in this kind of delta, this valley. And yes, that is going to be extending. That is normal. Doesn't look right, but I'll take you there here shortly. And same over here and opposite and here. Now I'll go tuck under the rest of these, the other four, flipping this over so that I have a place to put my glue. And I'm just trying to get that little flap to come straight through right up through that point. Boy, with the glue you get the kind of strings, I guess I would call it. You want a nice sharp pair of scissors. These are my Kai scissors. This is a perfect mission for these scissors because I'm cutting through a lot of fabric and heat and bond. Now I will go with my scissors and I'm just mimicking the profile that I previously created so that that just cleans off that point all the way around. In fact, I'm just going to do, rather than flipping it back and forth, do those four. Now I'll flip that over. Oh, one more, one more. So there is our ornament. The next thing I did, if you're going to maybe have a little tiny tree, what's beautiful about that is the top of the tree can fit right in here and you have a beautiful tree topper. And if you have any lights, the lights will show through those natural gaps that you created when you made the tree topper. If this is going to be an ornament, I just grabbed a gold piece of a ribbon and I threaded it through. I'm trying to remember now. I threaded it through like this. If you have a hole punch, a small hole punch, strong enough to go through all those layers, that'd be ideal. I did not have a hole punch that I felt was small enough or strong enough to go through there, so I just kind of threaded that through like that, gathered it up at the top, and simply tied a knot to whatever length, you know, figure out what length you want, tie a knot and trim it away and you have a Christmas ornament. So there you have it. It's a Scandinavian Christmas ornament. So easy, fun to make, could be a topper or you could be using those in the wintertime as snowflakes. So I hope you enjoyed our today's project. I'll see you next time.