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!