R is for red, white and green WIP

I'm noting this project, and then hitting the Pause button.

On Christmas Day, I had a bug to start working with all my Christmas fabric scraps. I've been wanting to make a Christmas quilt for a long time, and I'd decided recently to make it with log cabin blocks. I've put in quite a lot of work on it for the past two weeks - a lot of trimming my scraps into strips, and I have 12 completed 12.5x12.5 inch blocks.

But I have two quilt starts staring at me - the Night Sky for SM and Extreme Reader for RG. And TA has been pestering me this week to work on her quilt, T's Town with house blocks. (Yes, she is literally named for the town in which Adam and I met.)

My Christmas log cabin quilt is for the couch, but the couch doesn't talk and is a lot more patient than little girls who are growing up WAY too fast. So the Red White and Green blocks are now put away and will come back out another time. After these other three quilts, and probably a lot of clothes, are done.

new ornaments

My Christmas present from Adam was a full set of ornaments from The Forgotten Carols:

Let Him In

Homeless

You Were Not There In Bethlehem

Handel's Dream

Mary Let Me Hold Her Baby

The Dance

I Was Not His Father, He Was Mine

I Cannot Find My Way - Three Kings

 I Cry the Day that I Take the Tree Down

Aren't they AWESOME?!?!?! He ordered the wood flute, the quill pen (it came with ink), the corsage, and the treble clef precut but the rest he made himself. The last two ornaments are for me and Tawnia. The mirror says "The Star of Bethlehem" and he actually got the idea from an Amelia Bedelia book. The treble clef was for Tawnia because she spent Christmas with us this year. Next year, we need to figure out Adam's ornament - something with Scouts like a fleur de lis.

Christmas Wreaths

I had hundreds of ornaments leftover from my wedding four years ago.  We could have two, even three trees full of ornaments and still have extras.  So finally I decided to do something with them.  Found the idea on Pinterest (of course).  Bend a wire hanger into a circle, untwist the top and slide the ornaments on.  It is smart to hot glue the caps onto the ornaments first so they don't fall off.  I filled in any gaps and added more sparkle with the silver garland.  It is a surprisingly fragile wreath because the caps tend to snap, so I'm not sure that I would have wanted to buy ornaments specifically for this, but if you have a lot on hand it is a nice way to use them up.  I'm going to keep this hanging (in the storage room) instead of packing it away when the season is done, to help keep it intact.

This summer while I was in Oregon my Mom gave me a bunch of tulle.  I made a tutu for Cupcake, and this beautiful wreath.  I didn't want to spend the money on a wreath form (although if you do you'll need to cover it in white fabric before you start), so Aaron brought me home some sheets of Styrofoam from work and I cut out my own.  Cut the tulle and tie it on.  Hot glue stuff in the middle for pretties.  It is such a forgiving project, you can muddle your way through it and it will still look fantastic.  I already had the white snowflakes, so the only thing I spent money on was the red snowflake that I got at the dollar store.  If you like the style you can always use different colors and different middles for each season.  I've started one with cream tulle and will add autumn leaves in the center.  I'd love to see it in pink or green with flowers and Easter eggs for spring.  Or for another Christmas variety, just so the lower half in white, and add a Santa hat on top.  I guess this is my way of pleasing my inner-ballerina.

Tutorial for ornament wreath: here
Tutorial for tulle wreath: here, or here
How to cut tulle: here 

February pretties

Continuing the count to 52 weeks of pretty things in and around my house ... to get every week covered so far, I should be at 9. Given that I missed 2 weeks in January and have been in phase 1 of labor (don't ever call it "false" labor because there's nothing fake about it) for most of February, I'm kind of surprised that I got much of anything done this month. But I did! Go me! And I have a couple more projects started that aren't done yet, even!

Project 4: Adam and I rearranged the pictures and everything on the walls all over the house. We took some pictures down awhile back because we shifted some furniture and never got around to putting them back up. That's done now including with updated photos (that are still almost a year old, which tells you how old the other pictures were).

Project 5: I make a new flannel swaddling blanket for each of my babies, and it's what they come home from the hospital in. Baby JK was showing signs of an early arrival (and all labor indicators flat-lined this week, so she's still not here) so I got going on her blanket. I had it halfway done when JE took a chunk out of the side with the scissors (my mom refers to her as a "busy" 2-year-old - yeeeeah, that's a good word for it.) Fortunately, it was the side and not out of the middle. Unfortunately, it was a side that was already done. So I had to trim that edge down to get rid of the cut and do it again. Done, packed in the hospital bag, and scissors put away.

Project 6: When clearing out some drawers to use for the new baby's clothes, I put down scrapbook paper as a drawer liner. I just taped it instead of using glue so I can switch it out when I get my drawers back. Cutsey pink is great for a baby but I prefer something different for myself.

Project 7: Miniature corkboards on the "school wall" in our entry for the girls to hang up their art. I saw this on a homeschool blog but didn't bookmark it. Oops. Sorry, person who should get credit but won't. You get random picture frames, take out the picture and glass, sand and paint them in whatever colors you want, and put corkboard in them. The original link used really bright colors, which I liked. I've kinda/sorta decided that our colors for homeschooling are green and yellow, so those were the 2 colors I used, and I put them up with a pink board that SM built at a Home Depot kids workshop. I also put one in my sewing corner (painted to match my spool board) to display my collectors pins that I used to get while traveling and have been sitting in a box for forever. I gave the girls my Disney pins for their boards and some others from places they've been. I kept my Australia pins and some that have more sentimental value to me.

Project 8: I wanted some kind of sewing hand-work to do while sitting in the hospital for 2 days, so enter this month's Christmas project - fabric gift tags. I used this site to look up embroidery stitches, and still seem to have kind of come up with my own version of a chain stitch. Go figure. This is not done at all - I'm making about a dozen of them, and have the stitching done on 4. It's a decent start, considering everything that's been happening lately. I'll finish all the stitching and then do all the backings at the same time.

I also cut out skirts to make for the girls but haven't sewn them together yet. My March Christmas project will be from the scraps of the corkboard after cutting it down to fit the 8x10 frames. The March priority is definitely Easter dresses for the girls, since Easter is on the 31st.

January "pretty projects"

I'd like to think I can work on sewing and crafts every single day for a month, and maybe I'll be able to later this year or at another phase of life. Right now, my daughters are not particularly cooperative with letting me work on things during the day so I have to sew late at night. Even that's a hit and miss because I have punk children who refuse to go to sleep until darn near midnight sometimes. So I'm going with doing something pretty for my house and life every week for this year. Hopefully I can finish something every week, but as long as I at least work on it, I'll be satisfied. So here's what happened in January.

Project 1: hook racks for behind the girls' bedroom door. They were scrap pieces of wood left from making their bunkbed 2 years ago. I painted them and got the little hooks at Walmart. I made others here for their coats, which are under the stairs. Mindy beat me for the first project done for the year because even though I had them painted, it took me awhile longer to get to the store for the hooks, and get them actually onto the wall. This is just one of them, but there are three.

Project 2: I went through ALL of the children's books and reorganized the whole bunch. There are hundreds. An entire box went to the recycle bin because it was random loose pages, torn up books, children's magazines that had been pulled all apart ... it was a mess. It's still a mess because the girls are constantly pulling books out and not putting them away, but at least it's less of a mess. All the trash has been cleared out - that alone made a big difference. It wasn't making something - it was organizing stuff we already have. But occasional organizing projects are necessary to keeping my house livable at all, if not more pretty.

Project 3: I started my quilting class and made a scallop banner thing to hang up over a window or doorway or something - this is also my January project for the 12 Months of Christmas because I made it out of Christmas fabric.

Weeks 4 and 5: Nada - we were out of town for a week for my mother-in-law's funeral, and the next week was spent unpacking and putting the house back together. Why does it take so long to get cleaned up from a trip? It was just unpacking suitcases, for pity's sake. Sheesh. Anyway, I need to rewind back to the of my quilting class (it's all online and self-paced so I can do that - hooray! because it's, um, over now) and I want to get back on track with that at least a little bit. It's a 5-week class with 3 projects per week - it's not expected that you do everything. You can choose. I'd like to at least try everything since I paid for all the lessons and patterns but it's going to take me the better part of the year rather than just a month. Some of the projects are pretty substantial and require quite a bit of time (making more than one full-sized quilt, if I'm reading it right), and I don't have days at a time to devote to sewing. I have a few minutes here and there.

And for my weekly project deal ... I will make up these 2 weeks of missed projects! I will! Maybe not in February because of being at the very end of the pregnancy, but I'll figure it out eventually.

Also - going through everything from someone's life was an major eye-opener on what to save and what not to save. For example, photos. If Nancy wasn't actually in a photo, we chucked it. We had no idea who these people were, and the photos had been sitting in a box for literally decades. I have no interest in hauling things like that around when we move, or leaving it to my children and grandchildren to say after I die, "Who is this person, and why did Mom have a photo of them?" If there's a reason for me to have someone's photo, I'm sure I can find something that has me in the shot with them, and I need to journal/ID everything now (before I forget myself) of why this person is/was significant to me. I did a big photo album sort and purge 2 years ago when my parents brought me all the stuff I'd had stashed in their storage room for 7 years, but I feel another one coming on.

Christmas projects in action

Well, I didn't get 12 Christmas projects done this year but I am happy with what I did finish. Here they are in action!

 project ONE!

the garland over the patio door

 Making a wreath wasn't on my original list of things to do, but I saw it online here and really liked it. It's kind of small on my door when looking at the whole thing but I still like it. Adam actually wound all the yarn, and I made the roses out of felt like this.

Baby girl TA in her jumper that matches the playdresses that her sisters have. RG and JE modeling their dresses here.

This is the only picture I have of SM in her dress, with Mary Lane Haskill, an up and coming Broadway singer who performed in a show locally that I sang in a backup choir for.

The Christmas cards made with my tree skirt scraps are all tucked into envelopes and I was just waiting on my photo order from Walmart (which was LATE. Dumb store.) They can finally go in the mail on Monday.

I've been going a little crazy with the present-making, and yeah, I'm getting a little impatient to post pictures of them so I can show off and say, "LOOK WHAT I DID!!!!"

Christmas project 5

This project is half done ... or it's 2 projects with 2 more to go. I'm making winter/Christmas playdresses for my 4 girls. I got the idea last year from someone I went to church with - she bought a cheapo t-shirt from Walmart for her daughter and attached fabric to the bottom for a skirt - voila! A playdress!

I got the turtlenecks on clearance from the boys' section for 2 bucks apiece last January, and made sure I got them in the sizes I'd need now. They actually might last until next year as well, which would be awesome. The two big girls have red tops and the two baby girls have white, because that's what they had in the correct sizes. The new baby will have a different style - I'm not going to attach her skirt to a onesie because new babies go through onesies so fast. She may get a jumper - I'll wait and see after she's born.

I ordered the green fabric from fabric.com, and had to order some more because I didn't know if it would go with the red or not. Obviously, it worked. I'm waiting for round 2 of my fabric order. Basically, I cut the fabric into a rectangle measured to fit onto the shirt, and then sewed it with one seam which I attached at the side. A friend showed me how to do a gathering stitch, which I didn't know the first thing about but I do now! She also let me use her serger, which I very much appreciated. I hemmed the dresses at mid-calf and did a wide hem so they're pretty long, and the length can be altered next fall so they could still fit next year. White tights, black shoes, and we're in business.

The idea of making the top of a dress (armholes and sleeves) is still rather intimidating and there are a couple of other things about skirts that I need to figure out (how to put in an elastic waistband). But the t-shirt/skirt dress - I'm good! When the rest of my fabric gets here, we'll see if I manage to do the other two by myself!

The photographic evidence that I actually made clothing that my children can wear:

Christmas project 4

Or maybe this is project 1 for round 2. I'll just keep going with the current count for now. Here are two sections of my felt garland - I have no idea how long it is. I just used the entire spool of ribbon and kept laying shapes on it until I ran out. I used Christmas cookie cutters as my stencils onto the felt, sewed everything straight onto the red ribbon, and decorated with glitter glue. It could go around the Christmas tree, across the mantel, or over a door. I haven't decided where I'm going to put it yet when we decorate for the holidays.

back to work

Yeah, so, um ... my 12 Months of Christmas have not exactly gone according to plan. I'm chalking it up to the fact that I've spent a majority of this calendar year pregnant, along with starting to homeschool our older 2 girls.

Today, I finally just had enough and sat down and sewed my April project - a felt garland. I've had all the little shapes cut out for months, and bought the ribbon and thread earlier this summer. Last night I started pinning it and today I finished it. No pictures quite yet because now comes the embellishment with fabric paint and glitter, but that can't be done until after the kiddos go to bed. My girls MUST TOUCH EVERYTHING. Drives me nuts. But really, this puts me in a crafting mood. I actually want to work on more stuff. Part of nesting, since the baby is due in about 3 more weeks? Probably. But still. I'll take advantage of the motivation while I've got it - lightning strikes so rarely around here.

Anyway, so I missed 5 months of Christmas projects - April to August. I'm happy with the 3 projects I did at the beginning of the year, but I'm going to start over on the 12 Months thing. It's one of my bucket list things to do so it needs to be done right.

advance planning

It's apparently a whole year of Christmas stuff ... this morning, I randomly told Adam that I already have an idea for Christmas presents for our girls. I want to make little blankets for their dolls with fleece left from making blankets for some of my nieces and nephews (I make a fleece blanket every time there's a new baby in our extended family). And if the dolls have blankets ... maybe they'll need a crib. Or two. Or a miniature bunkbed ... that we could also paint pink! Heh. I think Adam would kill me if I even suggested that, even though we do have more pink paint. We're about pinked out here and need some other colors in the mix, not just this solid wall of PINK every time you walk into their bedroom.

Anyway, so that's something new on Adam's furniture-craftsman list, when he finishes fixing the dining room chairs and building me another bookcase - doll furniture. I know it's early to be thinking about Christmas presents, but when you're planning to make them and you're as inexperienced as we are, you need to start sooner rather than later.

As for my monthly Christmas projects - I'm behind because I gave Kera's sewing machine back to her. I was given a sewing machine to keep by another friend but she hasn't come over yet to show me how to use it (it did not come with a user's manual). I have my April project cut out - just waiting on the sewing and then I'll need to take some time to add the details. Fun with glitter glue! I think the May project can be done all by hand - no machine sewing involved so maybe that one will get finished first. And I have June's project mapped out. It's my first Advent calendar. I want to do two and they are totally different, but I don't know how the 2nd one will work out. It took quite a bit of thinking to figure out the first one but I think it will be cool. Hopefully by the end of next month, I'll be caught up and able to start fresh for July.

Christmas project 3

We were out of town for the first 2 weeks of March, then I had really bad allergies when we got back, then my sister was here for a week ... so my March Christmas project had to be a quick and easy one.

A couple of years ago, a friend gave our family the gift of a Christmas ABC book - it was blank pages in a 3-ring binder and plastic sleeves, with a Christmas poem at the bottom and we were supposed to add old Christmas cards to "illustrate" it. I'd just slid old cards into the sleeves but had not trimmed or glued them down yet. So that was my March project - to get the ABC book caught up.

We received blank pages like this. Some pages are still blank because I don't have cards with those pictures on them. I'll give it another year or two, and then maybe we'll fill these in with drawings from the kids.

I added our old Christmas cards like this. We have a couple of pages with personal Christmas photos on them (rather than cards), like my brother's family on U is for Uncles and Aunts.

Sometimes we had enough for a 2-page spread. One of my sisters has her Christmas "trademark" of sending cards with penguins.

If you would like to make your own book, here's the whole poem (author unknown).

A CHRISTMAS ALPHABET
A is for angels with white robes so bright. Their carols were heard on that first Christmas night.
B is for baby, the Christ child so dear. We celebrate Christmas, his birthday, each year.
C is for candles that flicker and shine, and send a warm welcome to your friends and mine.
D is for doorways whose garlands of green make Christmas merry as far as they're seen.
E is for elves who cheerfully make fun Christmas toys for Santa to take.
F is for fun the whole season through. With family and friends, there's so much to do!
G is for greetings, a merry hello, with a heart full of love for the people we know.
H is for holly with berries so red to make into wreaths that hang overhead.
I is for ice on the snow-covered hills, where sledding is fun, along with the spills!
J is for jingle bells merrily ringing, telling the world of the joy they are bringing.
K is for Kris Kringle, old Santa himself. Have you ever seen a jollier elf?
L is for lantern. I'm sure that its light helped Joseph and Mary that first Christmas night.
M is for Mary, her heart full of love for her baby son Jesus who came from above.
N is for Noel - the angels did sing to herald the birth of Jesus, our King.
O is for ornaments, shiny and bright. With lights on the tree, they sparkle at night.
P is for packages under the tree. They're filled with surprises for you and for me!
Q is for Christmas quilts, bright green and red. Will Grandmother make one to go on your bed?
R is for reindeer who stomp overhead. But you do not hear them, asleep in your bed.
S is for shepherds who first saw the star over Bethlehem's manger, and followed it far.
T is for trees trimmed with lights and with toys, surrounded by presents for good girls and boys.
U is for Uncles and Aunts that we greet at Christmas time parties, a holiday treat!
V is for voices that rang through the air announcing the birth of the Christ-child so fair.
W is for Wisemen who brought gifts so rare and fell down to worship the Christ child there.
X is for Xmas, a short spelling for Christmas. But I like to spell it this way: Merry Christmas!
Y is for yule log, whose bright sparks fly high and give a warm welcome to friends passing by.
Zzzzzz is for snores of dear Santa asleep. For on Christmas morning, his work is complete!

Christmas project 2

I may not have been posting anywhere for the past few weeks, but I have been working!

February's project was my Christmas cards - I got the idea to sew fabric onto the cardstock on MADE here. I used the scraps from the tree skirt, took some time to slice and dice the little squares from the red for some of them, and just laid the fabric criss-crossed on some of the others. Sewed, then trimmed all the edges.

If you look closely enough (or just look at them at all), you can tell that these are NOT professionally made, or made by anyone with any sewing experience. The fabric got bunched up or folded over wrong somehow on every single one, and my lines are most certainly not straight and even. But actually, that makes me like them even more. These are Christmas cards with personality!

I will admit, though, that I will most likely never do this project again. It was fun and I can say, "I made that!" But for the hours it took and I got only 25 cards ... I'll stick with scrapbook paper and stickers if/when I make cards again in the future. Much faster, they look a lot better, and my kids can participate and have fun with me.

all 25 cards. Where there is white space on the card, that is also fabric.

Christmas project 1

I've had fabric to make a Christmas tree skirt for literally years. I don't even remember how long anymore. I used to have a pattern for it - I think I gave it to someone thinking I'd never actually get around to making the tree skirt.

But here I am with my 12 months of Christmas and project 1 is - oh yes - the tree skirt! My friend Kera helped me figure out how to cut the pieces without a pattern, let me use her serger, loaned me her regular sewing machine, and showed me how to use bias tape for edging. I obviously didn't finish it in January but here it is! Done!And I did it myself! I had coaching, but no one did any of the work for me.

I did all the cutting at Kera's house and started sewing. Then I brought her machine home to keep working on it here. Adam was rather suspicious that the project would just sit there taking up space until I just returned the machine, but I proved him wrong! HA! One day, he came home from work and I said now that he was there to keep the baby out from under the table (she's crawling now), I could finish the initial sewing. I sat down and got to work. Adam went and got the camera. Punk. I went back to Kera's to use the serger.

For the edging, I got bias tape. I found a teeny little fabric shop here in town (there is one at all! Hooray!) with two cute little grandmas who held the baby and talked to my other 2 girls, or rather listened to SM talk nonstop. I had the tree skirt with me and we measured it and they showed me how to put on the bias tape with sewing on the back, and then flipping it over and sewing it again on the front. Yesterday afternoon, I was kind of restless so I decided I'd do the straight sides that are short. It went pretty quick, so I did the inside circle. By then I was on a roll, so I just kept going until ... with 2 panels left on the final run, I ran out of bobbin thread. AAAAHHHH! So I loaded up the bobbin and got the whole machine rethreaded, and finished.

I'm still a little stunned that I did it.

I'm totally stoked for my next two projects - ideas and instructions here and here. The links are not specifically for Christmas projects, but they will be when I do them! Kera is not getting her sewing machine back any time soon.

the 12 months of Christmas

Yes, you read that right. My friend Amy and I are going to make something for Christmas every month in 2011! It's going to be fun!

Our first draft list, in no particular order, includes:

felt hand puppets of the Nativity
a tree skirt
Christmas/winter playdresses for our girls
Advent calendars
handmade Christmas cards
dining room table stuff - runner, napkin rings, placemats, etc.
Nativity blocks
a felt garland of some sort of Christmas motif - lights, holly leaves, whatever
plan and compile materials for a whole month of crafting with kids (I was unsuccessful at doing this impromptu)

Okay, that's 9. Any more ideas? I suppose we should stop the list at 11 - January through November - and spend next December NOT working on the projects so we can enjoy the fun of doing crafts with our kiddos and baking! Mmmm ... baking ... I did not do nearly enough to appease myself this year. (Durned teething in my poor baby's mouth.)

No, we haven't decided what we're doing for January yet - I'll post it when we do. Anyone care to join us?