Wednesday 24 December 2014

Happy Handmade Christmas (stockings)

A very happy Christmas to all my blog readers!  As yesterday was the first day of my holiday, Pete and I had a lovely relaxing day at home, generally putting our feet up before the Christmas rush.  I took the opportunity to do a bit of sewing, which was really nice.

For the first year, we've decided to do Christmas stockings for each other - I thought it would be nice to get this little tradition into play before baby comes along next year!  I've seen a few stockings about, but as my mantra often is these days, why buy it when I can make it myself!?


This free stocking template from Love Sewing magazine came in very handy.  It was intended for a Scandinavian paper piecing stocking, but I definitely didn't have time for that malarky today, and it was a great template for my needs as well.

I used A4 pieces of felt for the body of the stocking.  Obviously, I wanted the stockings to be bigger than one A4 piece of felt (assuming that my hubby has been out buying me lots of pressies!), so each stocking piece was made of 2 pieces of felt, which I attached with some lovely red spotty bias binding which I had lying about.  I thought the green, red and white was a lovely festive combination.




To differentiate between them, it seemed like the best idea was to put our initials on the stockings - I managed a slightly wonky R and P done in white, just to complete the effect!


Looking forward to waking up to these full on Christmas morning - I suppose I'd better get my wrapping finished or 'P' might be a bit disappointed...!


Happy Christmas, and every blessing for the New Year!

Saturday 20 December 2014

Christmas tree decoration

Less than a week until Christmas!  I love this time of year - it's so fun getting the house decorated, and I love the Christmas sights and smells!  I did manage a little bit of Christmas craft when I was sorting through some of my ribbons and bits and pieces in the sewing room.

This was such a simple little craft to do, and results in a lovely little handmade decoration for your tree.  Last year, someone got me these cute little metal Christmas trees.  I have lots of ribbons about - some of them which I've bought, and some have come from presents and wrapping on gifts.


All I did was wrap the Christmas tree in a length of festive ribbon.  When I was finished, I secured the base of the tree with a little stitch, and that kept it all together.  I also added a loop of thread to the top of the decoration, and it was ready for hanging on our tree!



Here's our tree, looking festive!  We're off to Wales to stay with the Townsend contingent on Christmas Eve - can't wait!


Saturday 13 December 2014

Tartan snood

I've really not been a very conscientious blogger - or sewer - recently - many apologies.  Real life has somewhat got in the way!  For those of you who aren't on Facebook with me, we have had some very happy news - we're expecting a baby :)!  Baby T is due at the end of May 2015.  We're really excited - and I'm finally beginning to feel like a 'real person' again - not feeling sick every time I look at food, which is nice, and also getting a bit more energy back, now that I'm into the second trimester.

With Baby T on the way, this means we're starting to think about the sewing room - which will become baby's bedroom.  At the moment it's cluttered with sewing stuff (and other mess!), so I've been trying to sort through some of my fabric / sewing things, and have discovered various lovely fabrics which I had completely forgotten about.

One of those was this gorgeous tartan - which I bought way back in May, in Bude.  I absolutely loved the colours - bright colours are my absolute favourite.  I had the notion that I wanted to make a snood out of it, but never quite got round to it - especially as it then came into the summer, and scarves were the last thing we needed this year!


Still, when I dug it out today, I thought I would seize the opportunity to make myself a snood at last - particularly as I've not really sewn anything in ages, and this was a really easy little project.  I did a quick Google search, and found this handy tutorial.  As usual, I didn't quite follow the instructions - my material wasn't 66 inches long - a mere 57 inches - and it certainly wasn't stretchy, but it made up just as I wanted it, which is the important thing.


I took advantage of the bright (but chilly) afternoon, and got the husband out to take a few photos for me...!  You can wear this snood loosely round your neck, if you're somewhere fairly warm and are just wearing a scarf as an accessory - something which I do quite often!  On the other hand, there's enough fabric there to wrap round once, which will be perfect for me when I'm walking to work and need something to keep me cosy.


I've a suspicion I'll be wearing this a lot - time to dig out all my bright colours in time for the winter!