Name: Treacle Gingerbread Felted Wool Ornament
Brand: Carding House Co.
SKU: CHC-ORN-F-011
Price: 18.00 USD
Availability: InStock

Treacle Gingerbread Felted Wool Ornament

$18.00 USD

100% New Zealand Wool
Open pasture, naturally soft, cleanly spun, and extraordinarily resilient.
Individually Hand-Sculpted
Wet-felted and needle-detailed so no two pieces are identical.
Naturally Fresh & Durable
Breathable, odor-resistant, and easy to spot clean.

Description

A felted gingerbread man with cord icing down his arms and legs, three red buttons and a stitched smile.

He is a deep olive-toned brown rather than the usual warm ginger — the colour of gingerbread made heavy with treacle, baked dark. It is a more honest colour than the orange-tan most gingerbread decorations arrive in, and it sits better against a green tree.

The icing is real cord, not embroidery. A white yarn is laid along the surface and stitched down across itself at intervals — the technique is called couching — so it stands proud of the felt as a raised line with its own shadow, the way piped icing sits on a biscuit.

It follows the standard piping run: down the outside of each arm, down the outside of each leg, and meeting in a V at the hips. That is the decoration on a real gingerbread man, and it is what your eye recognises before it has read the face.

Three red buttons down his front, each a felted ball rather than a flat disc, so they sit out from the body as spheres.

Two black eyes and a curved black smile, worked into the surface. His back is left completely plain — no icing, no buttons — which is correct, because a cookie is only decorated on one side.

On a red and white twine loop.

Made from New Zealand wool.

Please note: small parts. Not suitable for children under three.

New Zealand wool, felted.
Dyed olive-brown body with black facial details.
White yarn cord icing, couched to the surface.
Three felted red wool ball buttons.
Red and white twisted cotton hanging loop.

The icing is a laid cord, and that is the whole difference between this and a printed gingerbread man.
A length of white yarn is laid along the surface and stitched down across itself at intervals rather than being sewn through in a running line. The technique has a name — couching — and it is what you use when you want the decorative thread to sit on top of the fabric rather than pass in and out of it.
The result is a raised line with its own shadow. Embroidered through the felt, the white would sit level with the brown and read as a pale stripe. Laid on top and tacked down, it reads as piped icinga bead of something applied to a surface, standing above it.
It also follows the correct run. Down the outside of each arm, down the outside of each leg, meeting in a shallow V at the hips. That is the standard decoration on a real gingerbread man, and it is the thing your eye recognises before it has got as far as the face. Put the icing anywhere else and he stops being a gingerbread man and becomes a brown figure with white lines on it.
The buttons are felted balls, not discs. Each one is rolled solid and attached so it sits out from the body as a sphere — which is why they catch light on top and throw a shadow underneath. Flat red circles in the same three positions would have read as dots.
The colour is worth noticing. He is a deep olive-toned brown rather than the orange-tan that most gingerbread decorations arrive in. That is closer to the truthgingerbread made heavy with treacle or blackstrap bakes dark and slightly green-brown, not orange. It also sits better on a green tree, where an orange-brown goes muddy.
And the body is worked flat rather than stuffed round. A gingerbread man is a cut-out cookie — a shape you recognise by its silhouette. Rounded and stuffed, he would have stopped being a biscuit.
The back is left completely plain. No icing, no buttons, no face. That is correct rather than lazya cookie is decorated on one side only, and icing the reverse would have been the mistake.

Pure New Zealand pasture wool naturally repels dust and light spills thanks to its dense, organic fiber structure.

Day-to-dayair him rather than wash him. Wool sheds dust and odour on its own given a few hours somewhere with moving air.

The icing cordit is laid on the surface and tacked at intervals, so it is the first thing to catch on a branch. If a length lifts between tacks, ease it back down rather than pulling the end, which drags slack out of the whole run.

Storing himhe is worked flat, so he stores flat without harm. Keep weight off the buttons so they stay round.

Hanging himuse the twine at the crown, not an arm.

Spot cleaningblot with a barely damp cloth and dry flat. Never submerge — white cord over a dyed brown body is exactly the pairing that runs, and once the icing goes tan the whole effect is lost.

Small partsthe buttons are separately attached. Not suitable for children under three.