Little Red Riding Hood Ornament

It's week two of our fairy tale ornament pattern series. This week, we are featuring Little Red Riding Hood.

Once upon a time, a young girl set off through the woods to take some goodies to her sick grandmother. Her mother dressed her in a bright red cape and reminded her not to talk to anyone on the way. As Little Red travelled along the path, she encountered a wolf who asked where she was going. He seemed to be a nice enough wolf, so Red forgot her mother's warning and told him she was heading to visit her grandmother. While Little Red was picking some flowers to add to her basket, the wolf sped to the cottage, ate Grandma,  put on her clothes, and climbed in bed to await the arrival of the young girl. Little Red found her "grandmother" in bed and was astonished by what big ears, eyes, and teeth she had. A woodsman arrived just in time to save Red from becoming the wolf's dessert, and he rescued her grandmother from inside the not so nice after all wolf...and they lived happily ever after.

When I (Kara) gather my supplies for most of my wool projects, I try to choose my matching threads at the same time I choose my wool colors, just in case I need to adjust things based on what I have. Or I just go wool and thread shopping and get what I need!

The Little Red ornament went together a little bit differently than the slipper, primarily because there are more pieces. I chose to back all my wool with Soft Fuse this time, since many of the pieces would butt up against each other. Any type of paper-backed fusible web would work. I traced the pattern onto freezer paper and then ironed them to my fusible backed wool. (Make sure you keep the fusible backing paper on when you iron the freezer paper.)


Once my pieces were cut out, I fused them onto my black circle and then whip stitched them down.

After all the parts were stitched down, I added some decorative details, like the stitching on Little Red's cape and the embellishment on the basket.  I used a stem stitch on the cape, along with a few French knots.

For the basket, I stitched five vertical straight stitches and then wove my thread through those straight stitches horizontally; the handle was defined with some diagonal straight stitches. I used a stem stitch around the neck of her cape and stitched a little bow.

Once the embellishment was finished, I fused two circles of Decor-Bond to the backs of the circles to give the ornament some stability in preparation for the beading.

Then I used the same knotted blanket stitch (see a tutorial here) to attach the beads and secure the front and back together. Before I got to the top, I inserted my ribbon hanger.

Here is Little Red Riding Hood on her way to Grandma's house.

We hope you will enjoy stitching this ornament. For your free pattern, click here: Little Red Riding Hood. If you made Cinderella's slipper last week, we'd love to see some of your examples. You could share them on our Facebook or Google+ pages. Or post your photos on Instagram and tag us (@needleseyestories). What will next week's fairy tale be? Come back next week and see!

UPDATE: Thank you for stopping by here! A detailed pattern will be available at a future date at www.needleseyestories.com