Cross stitch for Christmas

Christmas always seems to come too quickly so I'm very pleased to have a little bit of crafting under my belt already.

These two cute cards are again quick cross stitch kits by mouseloft, they come both as kits or kits with cards and the designs fit the windows perfectly.

I love doing these cross stitch kits - super quick and satisfying. I especially like doing the black outline at the end - it brings all the stitches to life :-)

Even more decorations

This year I finally got around to photographing some of the handmade Christmas tree decorations I've made over the years for our family tree. I've focused on just the felt decorations this time, I'll also try and take some more photos of a few of the yarn ones as well.

I made a batch of these pretty white decorations back in 2012 (original blog post) inspired by the decorations shown in the Christmas 2011 Mollie Makes issue.

These delicate little bells decorated with buttons were made about 3 years ago, I made them from a pattern in one of my craft magazines but can't remember which one now!

I absolutely love this little felt gingerbread house decoration (original blog post) this one is from a pattern in "Fa la la felt" a fabulous book packed with beautiful felty Christmas goodness.

This little Christmas Scotty dog was made a joke for my husband (original blog post) - he had thought a 'Poinsetter' was a type of dog, so I made him this and told him that was what it was :-)

These stars are what I made and gave out to family last year. They turned out very pretty with some Christmas fabric from one of my sisters and a tiny wooden star button sewn on.

This snowflake bauble was from another year... I borrowed a friend's diecast machine and couldn't stop cutting out these pretty snowflakes. They were quick to sew on with a bit of silver thread and some little silver star sequins as well to add some extra sparkle.

These two gorgeous felt decorations are full of character and detail. They are both from kits by paper-and-string - she does such beautiful and well thought out patterns. (Original Christmas pudding post)

This simple and pleasing felt tree decoration is another one from "Fa la la felt" - I love the vivid pink with the green and the free hand swirls in contrasting colour on each side (original blog post).

This little stocking was a quick attempt at a Pusheen style decoration for my husband who loves the silly and cute cartoons... didn't quite turn out as well as I had wanted... would have been better out of the stocking and looking plumper.

These two felt decorations I made back in 2010 (original blog post) using a pattern in the December 2010 issue of Sew Hip magazine. I love the ric-rack detail across the middle and the little bit of embroidery at the top of the baubles.

Last one to share with you... these stars I made many years ago to decorate our first Christmas tree together - probably back in 2006. They are as simple as they look - just a simple star shape with some sequins added for a little bit of extra sparkle. The sequins catch the light from the tree lights and I love seeing them up on our tree each year.

I hope you've enjoyed looking at some of my past tree decorations - can you tell how much I love working with felt? I'll get some more photos taken of my yarny ornaments to share soon too :-)

Wreath wrestling

Sorry for bring up Christmas in July - I'm extremely late getting this finished as it's taken me 2 and a half years to complete! I've crocheted 100s of leaves and berries to go on and then spent hours arranging and changing my mind and generally faffing.

My friends and family have put up very kindly with my wreath related mood swings and managed to stop me giving up on it when I got dispirited that it wasn't turning out how I had envisaged.

The robin is from a Brigitte Read pattern that I found tricky to make up but with a little bit of extra embroidery to even up the shape of the face I'm very happy with him.

Ahh - glad to have this project finished, hopefully I'll be moving on to something more season appropriate next!

June's decoration: Felt hearts

After a day of unsuccessful crocheting I needed a break so I dug out my back copies of Mollie Makes magazine and found that I had marked these felt hearts as a quick project to try.

These hearts were very quick and satisfying... once I had cut out the felt heart shapes I started adding buttons from my stash and had a great time picking them out and sewing them on. Once the buttons were all on it was a very quick job to join the hearts with a running stitch, add a ribbon hanging loop and stuff them lightly.

Ahhh - feeling much better now, nothing like an enjoyable couple of hours of crafting to help you relax :-)

April's decoration: Teddy baubles

These little bears look so cute all wrapped up in their warm winter scarves. They are pretty simple to make - being a basic ball shape with a few extra details added and then their snuggly scarves glued on at the end.

They are from yet another free pattern, this one being available through the wonderful All About Ami blog. I'm really starting to make some headway on my Ravelry queue... though by the time I've completed anything I usually have added another 3 projects to the queue!

Now I've just got to go and add some hanging loops to these and they will be all finished - these three are going to be so hard to give away :-(

Quick ornaments

Even though I'd given myself a year off from Christmas crafting I couldn't resist making a few little ornaments as presents. These little trees are one of the projects in "Fa la la felt" a simply gorgeous book containing 45 different Christmas decorations you can make with felt.

These trees looked to be the simplest in the book - just a simple shape with some freehand back stitching for decoration and after whip stitching both pieces together you're done. So very quick and satisfying, I would have made more but I ran out of felt!

Now I should really go and wrap some presents... happy Christmas crafting everyone!

Christmas cross stitching

Our little girl is now 2 months old and things are finally starting to get into more of a routine here at Tea Towers. For the past two months I have spent every evening trying to settle Emily by holding her in my arms which makes doing any craft particularly difficult. As we are starting to get better at settling her down in her basket I'm starting to have my hands free for half an hour every evening which has finally given me the time to finish off these pretty cross stitch decorations.

I tend not to do much cross stitch now I have kids as there is never enough time in the day to do long projects and if I tried to do a large piece it would take me years to complete. However, I was given a copy of a cross stitch magazine while in hospital before having Emily and it included a lovely kit to make these cute little Christmas houses. Surprisingly I found it didn't take me long at all to do the cross stitch element of these houses, what took the time was having to sew them all up, iron and stuff with fiberfill. I'm really pleased with how they came out though and will have to try and choose one to keep for us as the other two already have intended new homes.

Getting into the festive spirit

Every year I get myself into a pre Christmas panic, so when I start hearing Christmas carols or seeing the Christmas lights being put up round the shops I don't enjoy them at all. This year by some miracle I'm almost finished with the shopping for presents (so far I've done about 95% of it online - much easier!) and although there is still lots to do in the way of wrapping and card writing I'm feeling a lot more festive than I usually do at this time of year. Things have probably been helped by my not trying to get a huge amount of Christmas crafting done last minute which, though fun last year, does put me in a bit of a mad panic.

This year I'm going to be taking it a bit easier on myself, I'm not going to worry that I haven't bought all my friends and family the perfect present and just be happy that everyone will get something to say we are thinking of them. I have got a few small presents that I'm finishing off this week - but nothing too difficult so when the time comes to get all our Christmas decorations out of the loft tomorrow I should be very happy to see them all and relaxed enough to really enjoy putting them all out.

A late Ho ho ho!

Ho ho ho, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all my readers! Due to all the annual Christmas madness I've been very late in writing my roughly weekly posts which is a shame as I have lots of craftiness to share with you.

Now that Christmas is done for another year I can show you some of the things I had been busy working on but had to keep secret. First off are my Christmas cards of which I managed to make about 25 this year (not enough for everyone but it's a start). With a quick embossing lesson from my sister in law I was happy to find that embossing is a lovely and quick way to make some very attractive cards.

The trees on my cards are simply two stamped trees which have had the embossing powder sprinkled over them and then heated with a handy heating tool (a bit like a mini hair dryer) which gives a slightly raised surface and a bit of added shimmer from the glitter in the powder. The middle tree is a simple triangle crocheted from green thread and glued on with a star and trunk added in afterwards with green pen.

To go in my cards I made a batch of crochet star Christmas tree decorations - over 30 of them in fact, and these little lovely stars almost killed me. Though simple to make with a basic granny style hexagon as the centre and 5 triangles coming out from each side to make the points they each took about 1 and a half hours to make up, just weaving in the loose ends afterwards gave me callouses on my poor fingers! Once finished these stars had a quick soak in some white glue and water mix and left flat to dry so that they became nice and stiff.

Next I painted up a large batch of scented candles that I had bought at a very reasonable price from Ikea and with their apple and cinnamon scent were very Christmasy. Stupidly though I wrapped them all up before thinking to take a photo of them so all I can show you is a pile of some of them all nicely wrapped and waiting to be given away...

I still have one candle that I kept back for myself so if I get around to it I'll give it a quick once over with my glass paints to give you an idea of how lovely they looked.

Lastly I managed to find the time to make up some more of these great crochet slippers for some of the people who had admired the pair that I made for myself recently. The pattern is simple and you end up with a very comfy slipper that seems to fit well (at least it fits me and the other lucky three recipients that got the slippers pictured).

Phew! What a lot of crafting - I'm very glad that I did it but I really wished I had started much earlier as there was so much more that I wanted to make that I just didn't have the time to do. So in the spirit of making a start on some of next Christmas' crafting I've already taken down all our Christmas cards and cut them up for gift tags to go on next years presents. I'm also thinking I'll start to trying to make presents this very month so if you have any great ideas for Christmasy makes then let me know!

Christmas crafting

My little boy is still taking up most of my time but things have started to settle into a more manageable routine in the last few weeks giving me time to get back to my usual crafty ways.

My first proper piece of crafting since having the babe has been this little Santa hat that turned out just how I had pictured it and was surprisingly simple to make. I've even gotten round to writing up the pattern for this and you can find it on the CrochetMe website at: http://crochetme.com/patterns/baby-santa-hat. Doesn't he look like the cutest little guy you've ever seen? Hopefully this hat will still fit him for Christmas day, but if not I can always make him a new one!

My second bit of crafting is a couple of little crochet candy canes from a PlanetJune free pattern (http://www.planetjune.com/blog/free-crochet-patterns/candy-cane/). These little candy canes are lovely as tree decorations and so quick and easy to make, perfect for the mum in a hurry!

Now I'm off to try and finish off an adjustment to one of my early patterns which hopefully I'll be able to show you the results of soon.

A late blooming poinsettia

You don't normally get the best out of poinsettias in April - but not in my flat... nope, in Jess land time has stood still for a good 4 months.

As you can see I'm still doggedly working my way through a list of UFO's and this is one that I started way back in December but didn't have the heart to finish. Nothing to do with the pattern though (which is freely available on the PlanetJune blog), I made life much harder for myself by deciding that I wanted to make it up in crochet thread and have it as a tree decoration.

In the end I think it was well worth all the effort, I love the chunky 3D nature of this decoration and I can't wait till December to show it off to my friends and family. But for now this will be the last late Christmas decoration that I'll be making up, best move on to some of my other patiently waiting projects.

New Years resolution - number 1

One of my crafty New Years resolution is to finish off some of my UFOs that I have been meaning to do for years. These little thread crochet stars were one of the first things that I ever crocheted, back when I was teaching myself at around age 14 (14 years ago now - yikes!).

I borrowed a lovely book from my local library called "Country Crochet" (I think - it was a long time ago now) and the beautiful fillet crochet and simple white thread items really appealed to me. Sadly this book was out of print at the time and I never found a copy that I could buy.

However, I did make these little stars - but because each one had about 11 loose ends to work in I never got around to finishing them off and starching them with PVA glue. I found them again a few weeks ago and decided that they had been waiting long enough! So after a few hours of working the ends in and then dunking them into some diluted PVA this is how they turned out. I really love them, and they will definitely be making an appearance on next year's Christmas tree.