Crafts of Christmas Past

Christmas is a great time for crafters - a time to get out the ribbons and sparkles, sequins and stars. I love making decorations for the Christmas tree. They are small enough to make quickly and can be as simple or as elaborate as you wish. This year I have added to my collection by making some couched wool stars. I've used up tiny scraps of wool on a base of felt. Thick and fluffy wools gave a lovely texture when they had been tamed, but  soft chenille and good old double knitting worked well too.  I used leftover threads for the couching, ranging from tapestry wool in the yellow star, to a mixture of metallic machine thread, embroidery floss and strong white cotton in the purple one. Once all the couching had been done, I cut out the star close to the stitching and oversewed the edges to a matching star shape. All the loose ends were trapped inside, and acted as a bit of padding. It was fun to play with the colours on these - the warm yellow star is my favourite.

Since they only appear once a year, Christmas ornaments tend to survive much longer than other homemade efforts. The little green patchwork tree below is about forty years old and was one of my very first patchwork makes, inspired by a picture in the Marks and Spencer Christmas Celebration book. A few years later, I'd moved onto hexagons and a more sophisticated effort with bead decorations.

The little angel originally had a satin dress, which frayed badly, and after a catastrophic fall from the Christmas tree a few years ago she was given a cosy new felt dress and new hair and halo, looking a lot happier for it. 

The angel and her trees.

Father Christmas pops up in various guises on the tree. Here, the sequined Santa was part of a huge kit of Christmas decorations that I sewed while living in America.  All the pieces were stamped onto sheets of felt and numbered, ready to cut out and sew. The sequins, beads and threads were all provided. There was a sheet of instructions with a perplexing array of symbols for what you should do where. The kit maker was Bucilla.

The middle Santa is made from Fimo modelling clay. I'm not sure why he's doing jumping jacks, possible an effort to slim down his perfectly circular belly. He's thin and flat and so rather delicate. I'm always glad to find he's survived another year when I unpack the box of decorations.

The last Santa is a finger puppet, which I used to produce in bulk for school Christmas fairs, which is why he is machine rather than hand sewn. Perhaps this one suffered the indignity of not being sold. He usually swings about on the lower branches of the tree with the bigger baubles. 

Father Christmas, of course, needs stockings to fill. The stripy stocking here was a very early effort, carefully hand sewn. I think the material came from a Laura Ashley patchwork pack, and it has a precious (though now rather grubby) velvet ribbon round the top. The tiny Santa inside is also made from Fimo. He is about three-quarters of an inch tall.

The green plush stocking was made when I acquired a sewing machine with embroidery stitches. It looks like I had fun trying them out, although nowadays I rarely use anything but straight and zigzag stitches. 

The end stockings are both made of felt, decorated with beads, stars and those lovely blue sequins, which it turns out weren't that useful for anything else. I love the curly toe shape of these, although Father Christmas must find it tricky squeezing the presents in. The longest of these stockings is about 4 inches. 

 Happy Christmas!

Christmas Scraps

Every project produces a pile of scraps, whether it's fabric snippings, lumps of wadding or half lengths of thread. Of course these all get saved, because they will certainly 'come in useful' for something else. My fabric scraps are kept together in a large basket, and one afternoon, on a whim, I sorted them all into separate colour bags. This means less scraps fly about when rummaging for a particular colour. However, it also means that any new scraps have to be sorted into their correct bag, and this doesn't always seem like an appealing job. Therefore a new basket has appeared, full of scraps waiting to be sorted. 

I've been using blue, green and white scraps to make small squares and rectangles, with the idea of eventually putting them together somehow to make something. I'm using my favourite technique of raw edge applique, sometimes sewn over the edges and sometimes secured with tiny stitches all over the fabric. I've done both on this star, using metallic thread which makes it sparkle in the light (but not on the photo, unfortuately.) The size is about 3 inches square. 

Much scrappier is this little cottage in the woods scene (a favourite subject!). The sky and background were taken straight from the scrap basket without any trimming, and the trees and house cut roughly into shape. This piece is about 2 inches by 3 inches. I like its haphazard look and loose threads.

At last, the long-suffering Bare Rabbit has a piece of clothing that seems to suit him. In addition to the sewing scraps, there have been knitting and crochet projects over the years, not to mention some impulse buys, and so I have a drawer full of half-finished balls of wool. In here I discovered a bag of very small scraps, which I've crocheted up into a thick lumpy jumper for him. He looks a lot more at home in this than in fancy bloomers or the dreaded spotted dungarees. The colour combination has turned out very well -I'd be happy to wear this jumper too. 

 I improvised the pattern for the jumper, but Bare Rabbit was made from the Luna Lapin pattern. The website is here - https://www.coolcrafting.co.uk/luna-lapin/

 

Gingerbread House

The last place to visit on the Fairy Tale Quilt is the Gingerbread House. I found the perfect  gingerbread coloured cotton for the walls, with a swirled chocolate roof. Some narrow rickrack turned into the icing, with sugary beads sewn on at the points. I thought the stripey bead looked like a mint, so that went on top. A large wooden bead made a chocolate button door handle, and I used tiny buttons in fudgy colours for the flowers and heart, all sewn on with the dreaded invisible thread. The candy canes gave me a bit of trouble. I tried to manufacture some free standing ones out of twisted thread coated with glue. They dried quite successfully, but attaching them was more of a problem. In the end I just embroidered them using a fly stitch, couched over with red thread.

The Gingerbread House features in the German tale of Hansel and Gretel, and far from being a cosy, welcoming place, it was meant to ensnare the children so the witch could fatten them up for eating, after their parents have abandoned them in the forest. I've added a trail of white beads on the quilt to show the trail of stones the children left to find their way home. 

Out of interest, I've looked in some of my fairy tale books to see how they described the Gingerbread Cottage. It seems the walls can be made of bread or buns as well as gingerbread, and the roof could be cake or marzipan. The windows are made of crystal sugar or barley sugar, and sometimes have nut-pastry frames, which sounds very tasty. You might also find brandy-snaps, raisins, lollipops and sweets to nibble on, and even candyfloss smoke coming out of the chimney. Who wouldn't want to go inside? Although it does seem a bit rude to march up to someone's house and start eating it, without asking first! 

Wikipedia mentions some interesting variations on the tale here, including a French version - La Cabane au Toit de Fromage, The Hut with the Roof of Cheese. I would find that house very tempting too.

When I've not been sewing this week, I've been relaxing with this jigsaw, which features a patchwork quilt designed by Kaffe Fassett. Quite a tricky one to do, in fact, involving peering at tiny pieces of the patterns and trying to match them up. Over the years I have found the work of Kaffe Fassett a huge inspiration, and own several of his books.

 The first one was Glorious Needlepoint, back in the eighties, and I still remember it being a revelation that you could put many shades of the same colour into a piece and get a beautiful result. I also have his Glorious Knitting book, much thumbed, and I made a pile of shawls on circular needles in wild colours following his patterns. The only adult jumper I've ever managed to knit was a blue and green sawtooth creation from this book. Sadly, it wasn't made to last, and I don't seem to have a photo of it in all its lumpy glory. 

This quilt was finished in 2008, and is my favourite of all the ones I've made. It was based on a design from Kaffe's Passionate Patchwork book, and is hand pieced and hand quilted. I can remember sitting on the carpet to quilt it, with one of our pet gerbils perched on my knee.

On a much simpler scale, here's a wonky little pencil pot, made from random stitching over scraps of toning fabric. Unlike the quilts, there was no planning in this at all. At first it was a bit of scrap to try something out on, then the stitching became denser and I liked the look and the feel of it, so I just carried on. By the time it was full, I like it too much to abandon it, so I sewed it onto a thick backing fabric and attached the bottom to a circular base. Little pots are always handy - I'll probably keep some playing cards in this one. I've included it here because it uses the same inspiration - lots of shades of the same colour, blended together. 

Kaffe Fassett's website is here

 

Castles

 

This week I have been adding the finishing touches to some of the grander residences on the Fairy Tale Quilt. The castle in the very centre is composed of glowing tawny fabrics, with some deep blue starry stuff to add a touch of magic. It has good strong doors with hooks and eyes for hinges and knockers, and the design of the fabric give the impression of many windows. Perhaps someone is looking out, waiting for the arrival of Cinderella for the Prince's Grand Ball.

At the top of the quilt, we find the Sultan's Palace, bedecked with jewels. It may be that the genie has just conjured it up, as a grand home for Aladdin. However,  I have just started reading a  translation of the Arabian Nights , so I am hoping to discover a host of strange and wonderful characters who could be lurking in here. There will certainly be enough subject matter for a whole new quilt. Hmm...

A bit less grand is the castle of Sleeping Beauty. The briars are beginning to creep up the walls, but they have a long way to go to cover the castle. Inside, the king, queen, princess and everybody else are all snoring away gently. I knew that wicked witch was up to something!

When it comes to designing buildings, this book has been a great inspiration over the years. It has photographs of every type of building you could want, from tiny cottages to towering cathedrals, ghostly ruins to grand country homes, and a smattering of bridges, churches, lakes and rose gardens. It's especially good for when I want to do some drawing - the wonky angles of the old buildings are very forgiving if you can't draw a straight line!