Christmas Projects

This November and December have been a creative fest!  I have no idea how I managed, but I seem to have squeezed in lots of lovely quilting and sewing projects for the festive season.  I think it really helped going along to the Rags to Bags Christmas projects class where I was inspired by the seasonal fabrics, trims and the fab range of projects J taught us.  Courtesy of her tuition and encouragement we now all have new strippy Christmas stockings all ready for Santa to fill on Friday night!

J's design included a cuff which was nice to make, although I am partial to the prairie points she taught on last year's class.  The cuff on hubby's stocking was adorned with gingerbread men buttons in honour of how much he loves the Gingerbread Man scenes in Shrek - "Not my gum-drop buttons!"  A asked if he could have jingle bells on his stocking cuff, so I was happy to oblige and I swapped buttons for a crocheted heart motif on mine.  It was such indulgence to play with fabrics and embellishments and such a great way to spend a day with something to show for it.


After the scrappy stockings we made Christmas bunting, gift bags and little gift cornets.  The projects moved on a pace since each one was reasonably straightforward so there were many variations on a theme which was a great opportunity to experiment with embellishment.  I think my favourite result was my EMMANUEL bunting which I have been hoping to do for so long.  I also love the mini-bunting variation which I made up in red and red gingham.  It was very satisfying to be able to combine some other crafts - crochet, cross-stitch and Suffolk puffs - with the bunting to really add my own personal touches to them.

The difficulty with the gift bags and gift cornets was that they are so cute I don't want to give them away.  At least they are fun to make so it won't be a tough job to replace them!

Inspired by all the festive gift making I stitched up a mini-stocking in ivory fabrics with ribbon and lace to give it a kind of vintage look. A jar of speciality jam and two of her favourite choc bars tucked inside, it became a little personalised pressie for A's teacher.  I cannot really take credit for the idea as I was inspired by a similar (though larger and much more perfectly made) version by J which she showed us at her class.  Luckily, she's my friend and doesn't mind being my inspiration!  I just hope A's teacher likes it.

I also made a set of Christmas coasters for our kitchen and a little set as a gift for mum.  They were using up a strip of little teddy bear Christmas ‘labels’ that I bought at a Stitch show about 3 years ago!  When I found the strip I was determined to make use of it this year and not to return it to the box where it could remain for goodness knows how long.  I think they turned out reasonably well given that there was hardly a square corner to any of the 'labels'.

And finally, I wanted to use up a lot of little scrappy leftovers from previous projects so I made them into this door frame bunting using J’s mittens and mini-stocking templates for bunting.  Great fun!

The opportunity to indulge in festive fabrics and be a bit more over-the-top than usual has been bliss and I'm really surprised looking back over the past four or five weeks with just how much I did manage to achieve.  Though I think that's enough Christmas projects for one year!