Free Standing Lace Remembrance Ornament

I know the Christmas holidays are over. Hopefully, your Christmas decor is put away by now. This past Christmas season was very hard for my family. I would say the entire last year has been hard. It is only now that I am able to write a bit about it.

My father had always led a healthy and physically active lifestyle. It served him well for 86 years. For the last year, his health declined and it was very hard to watch and frustrating for him to deal with as well. He passed away November 1, at the age of 87, and it was such an incredibly sad experience. Most sad of all for my mother, who lost her life-partner, just shy of their 60-year wedding anniversary. She did not decorate for Christmas holidays as it was all too soon for her. I did however, want to make her something for Christmas in remembrance of my father. I thought an angel of some kind would represent my father well.

The remembrance ornament I made for Mom in remembrance of Dad.

I searched online for an ornament design that I could work with. Found several 3-dimensional free-standing lace ones that appealed to me at S-Embroidery.com. I chose one of the ornaments with a bell-shaped skirt that looked like it had enough lace stitching that it could support lettering embroidery. If you have not made free-standing lace designs before, see my prior post on how to stitch free-standing lace designs.

The angel ornament design that I started with.

I opened the angel embroidery design in my Brother BES embroidery lettering software. I removed the embroidery roses from the wings and skirt. It took a few trials and tests to come up with lettering that I liked. I finally decided to put my father's full name across the bottom of the skirt, and his birth and death dates on the angel's wings, all in copper-colored metallic thread. I stitched the angel in a linen color thread as I thought it was more masculine.

Final design stitched out.

I went to my local Hobby Lobby store for some findings to complete the angel.

Items to complete the angel ornament.

I used linen-color cotton perle thread to stitch the angel closed and to make the hanging loop. I really liked the way the angel turned out.

I showed it to my sister who liked it as well. I decided to make four more angels so that my siblings and myself could each have my father's remembrance angel on our Christmas tree.