Christmas cross stitch

Happy Christmas Eve!  It makes a change not being at work on Christmas Eve!  Last night I finished off my last Christmas card. This year I made and sent a grand total of 3 Christmas cards... to be honest, I'm amazed I made any at all the way the past three months have been.  But things are looking up...

Some of you may have seen this work in progress on Instagram.  I got it finished...

Then I made it into a card.  Unfortunately, the photo was on my phone and my phone just inexplicably died on Tuesday.  I can't remember if there were other photos I hadn't uploaded to Photobucket, so I may be missing others.  You'll just have to imagine it!

I made this one whilst spending a lovely 3 days with my parents at my brothers' house with him, his wife, stepdaughter and my 4-year old nephew.  I added eyelets to the corners and a simple peel-off greeting.  All the designs are from issues of CrossStitcher (the UK mag), but I can't tell you which ones as I don't keep the magazines, just the patterns I like.

This one took AGES to stitch.  I didn't think I'd get it done in time.  The backstitch went on forever!  Luckily it's for my parents so I can take it round today.

I'd like to wish you all a wonderful Christmas, or, if you don't celebrate, have a lovely weekend.  Thanks for all your support over the last few awful months.

beaded ornament

I only have one photo to show you of the beaded ornament I made.  I took about 10 but they all came out really badly.

This is the Georgian Bauble from Spellbound Festive Beading by Julie Ashford.  I've had the book a while, but always thought it was a bit hard, now was the time to try.  The bauble is 40mm so it's pretty small. I used size 11/0 and size 8/0 seed beads along with bugle beads and crystals.  

I'm really chuffed with how it turned out and it looks great on our over-crowded Christmas tree!

Speaking of which, I'd like to wish all of you who celebrate it a very merry Christmas and a happy new year to all!

I'll be back on Boxing Day with more crafty stuff.

Christmas cards

Well check me out, I'm organised for Christmas already!  OK, so that's not strictly true as I've done nothing else to organise, just made my cards, but that's a good start.

I used my Sizzex Big Shot to cut out the Joy, tree and stocking motifs from funky foam.  I did a set of each in two different colours, then swapped parts of them over.  

Each motif is backed with a square of patterned paper and the tree has some tiny jewels added.

I used some of the cut out parts to make a square card using three complimentary colours of tree and a single joy.

Simple, quick, done!  Now I just have to remember to write in them and actually post them... 

Secret Santa

It's Saturday, I've finished all my Christmas shopping and all my obligational makes.  So I'm free.  I decided to do some sewing.  I went up to my sewing room.  An hour later I came downstairs having had a right good tidy up and rearrange!  Now I'm failing to make anything again!

I don't have much to show you.  I'd got tons to show you and in my wisdom was posting every day, I really shouldn't have as now I've run out of stuff!

There's just this...

This is very hard to make out as it's crocheted in black yarn.  It's a bear hat.  An adult bear hat.  For a man.  We had our team's Secret Santa on Wednesday and I picked out the name of one of the loveliest blokes on the planet.  He's a really good sport and every year everyone eagerly awaits his Christmas jumpers, hand appliqued by his wife!  Clearly I needed an item of clothing to make him look daft!  I didn't use a pattern, just crocheted an adult sized hat and added ears.

I couldn't leave it there though.  He had to have a Christmassy hat.  Ta dah!  I really hope you know what this is... everyone in the office did.  He was delighted and put it on straight away, then wore it on and off all afternoon. Sadly our office is about as hot as hell, so he couldn't wear it all the time.

I made the pattern up, alternating between white and brown yarn to make the cream pouring down the sides.  The berry is a pompom and the leaves are crocheted following a free pattern by Lucy at Attic24.  

I think I'm in love.  Is it possible to be in love with a Christmas pudding hat?

Linking up to: 

blackwork 2

Following on from last week's blackwork post, I thought I'd show you the rest of the blackwork I did.  Tucked in my New Anchor Book of Blackwork Embroidery Stitches were some loose leaves torn from a magazine, one of the cross stitching ones I think.  My mum gave me the book so I'm not sure where they came from.  On a Christmas tree decoration roll, I set to.

I was really pleased with this holly as I had the perfect green in my stash.  I suppose I could have done the berries as buttons.... I might try that.

This star (and the only black piece of blackwork I've done!) was a nightmare to sew.  I couldn't get the patterns to align properly despite recounting dozens of times!

Above is the design Snowflowers by Jeanne Dansby.  I had this saved as a PDF so I'm afraid I don't have a link for you.  I went with red for pointsetters and I love it.  It's so delicate.  I added green size 10 seed beads into the diamonds.

This was another free design from Borduurblog, that link will take you to a page with lots of blackwork designs.

Now I just have to get these sewn up into ornaments.  If you fancy giving blackwork a try, I have loads of free patterns saved on my Blackwork Pinterest board.

pile of puds

Christmas is approaching fast.  OK, so not that fast, but it is if you have a craft fair at the beginning of December and sold out of your most popular stock.  

Yep, these little fellas were an unexpected hit last year.  They're hand sewn from felt with a blanket stitch and a little button and ribbon bow to represent holly.

They're pretty diddy, about 5cm so are the perfect size for your tree.

See? 

santa hat and nappy cover

I've still got more newborn photo props for you I'm afraid!  I just hope my friend remembers all this when she's a rich and famous photographer (she will).  She'd asked for a Santa hat to take photos of her little one.  Although she's now almost 8 months, she's a tiny little thing who wears clothes for 1-3 month olds, so this would probably fit some newborns anyway!

In case you can't guess, this is a Santa hat and a nappy cover.  A nappy is a diaper to you North Americans.  I used this free Santa hat pattern, but I used a chunky yarn and didn't add the rows in white, instead I sewed on a maribou trim.  It was a nightmare.  Not only did the feathers get everywhere, the thread didn't like it and got caught up with most stitches.

You can imagine how much I enjoyed sewing it to the nappy cover, for which I used this free nappy cover pattern.  The front tabs fold in to encircle the baby's waist and are fixed with buttons through the rows of trebles (US - so UK double trebles).

I think I prefer the back view!

I was rummaging through my button jar for the perfect white buttons, but couldn't find any big enough, then I remembered my self-cover buttons. 

I used a scrap of Christmas fabric, not that you can tell!  I think white might have been a better choice, but then everyone will be looking at the cute baby, not the method of closure!

Right, I'm off to lint roll myself, the sofa and floor.  Again. 

one last Christmassy post

Happy Boxing Day ladies!  I celebrated with a caramel choux bun for breakfast... paragon of virtue and good health me. 

Mr CA is very hard to buy for, I'd bought his stuff from his Wish List, but wanted some little treats too so I needed a stocking to put them in.  All this was decided on Christmas Eve - last minute Wendy strikes again.

I drafted a quick pattern on some sheets of A4 stuck together...

And pieced together some squares from a Christmas charm pack.  Yes, that's right, I did piece some of them together upside down...

I cut the backing from red fabric, added a green strip for the cuff, fused some fusible fleece to it... and realised it was the wrong way round.  Rather than cut another backing, and use up more fleece, I cut those 6 squares off the front and sewed them, upside down, to the other side.

Ta dah.  Erm, yes... it's an odd shape and the cuff wasn't big enough to fold over so it's just a weird bit at the top. 

The piecing isn't too bad if I do say so myself, though here you can see some of those upside down squares.

The backing is a little wrinked...

And it looks even stranger when it's full of presents!  Oh those upside down Christmas trees are screaming at me...  Ah well, Mr CA didn't care, he just liked the sweeties inside.

I spent a happy few hours making it.  This is the view from my craft room window - oh Norbert, I do love you.

christmas cards

No prizes for guessing what this post's about!  It's Christmas Eve and I've finally finished the Christmas cards for my family... so I suppose they'll get them on Christmas Day...

Remember my reindeer?  I stitched another one.  I had to use my own threads as there wasn't enough in the kit, despite the fact you were supposed to be able to get three reindeer from it!

Here they are doing a Christmas jig together.

 

This little fella was stitched from another cover kit from Crossstitcher.  I messed up on the grey - well they did!  Where I've used grey, that should be light grey, but there wasn't any provided which is why I didn't notice until I was supposed to do highlights in dark grey...

 

I attached him to a piece of paper with brads and stuck it to a card blank. This is for Grandma CA.  She's Mr CA's grandma, I lost all my grandparents and Mr CA only has the one, I have adopted her as my own grandma.

One jiggy reindeer is for my parents - constructed the same was as the robin card.

The other is for my parents-in-law.

I used some of the beaded snowflakes I'd made (alas, the orders stopped coming in!) for cards for my brother and his family, and my sister-in-law and family.  The snowflake is suspended from the eyelet (stuck on the back with an easy-peel sticker) so they can put them on their trees afterwards.

 

The bottle caps were ready-made so I just glued them on.

This is definitely my last post before Christmas, so I wish you all a good one!

Not a very shiny nose

Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer
Had a very shiny nose
And if you ever saw it
You could even say it glows

 

Free kit and chart from a recent issue of Cross Stitcher.

more more more

Don't you just hate it at this time a year when all the TV channels are just showing repeats?  Well that's what you're getting from me today!
 
 

Last week I showed you the chicken scratch lavender hearts I'd made?  The ones I showed you before were all embroidered with white thread.  This one was embroidered with a size 5 perle cotton in a variegated array of pinks.  I'm not sure it works as well as the white.

 

I also showed you some crochet snowflakes I'd made.  Well I made some more.  These have all been stiffed with modge podge after an initial blocking with half a can of starch!

 

The top snowflake is a free pattern from the wonderful Snowcatcher who has tons of free snowflake patterns on her blog.

I've just tried and completely failed to identify the other three patterns, clearly they don't look as they should, but if it's free snowflake patterns you're looking for, try my Pinterest board.  Good luck!

And last, but not least, I made more felt Christmas puddings.  These were certainly popular, I think I sold four! 

snowflake beading

Good morning ladies!  Did you know, it's nearly Christmas?  I've only just found out, can't believe no-one told me.  I haven't finished making my christmas cards, let alone sending them, in the couple of days since I found out, I have manage to do half my shopping online so the going is good!

You would have thought I'd have been alerted to the upcoming festivities when I went to a snowflake beading class at The Bead Shop Nottingham, but apparently not.

Me and my wonderful mum were the only attendees, and we soon learnt how to whip up these little babies.   The one in the photo above is made from Szwarovski zillions so it reflects the light beautifully, something my amateuristic photography completely failed to capture.  Imagination is key here ladies!

When I got home, I whipped up a couple more.  Now, I was going to buy the zillions, but at 10p each and with each snowflake needing 36, that would have been pretty expensive, although beautiful.  I compromised and bought some Czech firepolished glass faceted beads, also very pretty though not quite Szwarovski league!

The next day I had an order on Folksy (bearing in mind I get about 4 a year), so I put one of these snowflakes in the parcel as a little free gift.

The next day I had another order, so I added a snowflake to that parcel too.  2 were claimed by my mother in law which left me with just the original one left.  I want to add them to Christmas parcels so last night I sat down and started making a third.  Guess what?  This morning I had another order!  (I'd also like to point out that 2 days ago I had ANOTHER order, but from the same lovely lady who'd ordered the baby hat, she was so pleased with it!).

So that's 4 Folksy orders, on top of 1 from a friend, 1 from the father-in-law and 2 from the wonderful mum in just a few days...  I think it's down to the snowflakes.

The only problem is, now I know, it won't work. 

p.s. it did work... just had another order!