MLP Hair Bows

Here's my most recently finished project:

I found this adorable heart shaped My Little Pony (Rarity, they also chose Pinkie Pie but you'll see her later) on this cross stitch sight, along with several others. And knew that my big princesses would love them... the question became what to do with them.

I figured since they're small-ish in design I would try my hand at making some hair clips out of them, although, I couldn't find any directions on how to do it. I couldn't find anything like them. So I decided to wing it. I looked for instructions on making pins and ornaments out of cross stitch designs but all of them seemed to included perfectly square designs, that pulled the excess material behind and I knew that wouldn't work for me. Anyway, here's how it came together, and I'll include "instruction" as I go.

My mother gave me some Aida cloth that she had found on sale but never used, so here's the finished cross stitch.

After that I thought I would add a little interfacing to secure the stitches and stiffen them up just a bit.

After that I found a site that gave instructions on turning a cross stitch into an applique. It seemed to be the most secure way of cutting around the shape. As I cut, very carefully, around the design, I used some Fray Check to secure the Aida from unraveling, which was my biggest fear.

Then the problem was attaching the hair clip piece. I use alligator clips with all my other hair bows, so that's what I had to work with. I decided the safest bet would be to use felt over the back and secure the clip to that. I ended up cutting a few slits in the felt (after deciding which corner of the felt the design best fit and glued it there. Here you can see how I just slid the clip through the felt, and I put a dab of hot glue on the back side.

Then I glued the cross stitch to the felt over the clip.

Then I cut off the excess felt, and as an extra security measure I back stitched around the design through the felt (although if I would have thought of that before I wouldn't have used the glue all the way to the edges).

(I hadn't done the back stitch yet when I took this photo but you can see it in the first picture of KL with it in her hair.)

And here's KL at school this morning, fake smiling because I told her I wanted a picture of her with the clip in her hair.

That's all for now,
Jo!