Christmas Ornaments

I make different ornaments each year to give to Anna and Alex as well as other special friends and family.  This year I settled on woven stars; and Amanda over at House Revivals has a really great series of tutorials (which I followed very closely).  She makes hers out of old book pages, but of course I used fabric.  I recently inherited a bunch of Christmas prints, and I thought this would be a perfect use for them.

The ornaments are really not difficult to make, as Amanda said, the most time consuming part is making the strips.  My strips were all 6 inches long and either 1/4 or 1/2 inch wide.  I wasn't sure whether fabric would be stiff enough, but I think it worked ok.  Each strip is four layers thick: I folded 1.25 or 2.25 inch strips in half, then in half again (like you would for a purse strap only without interfacing) then sewed down the middle.  I assembled them with fabric glue and used mini binder clips to hold the corners down.  I tried a bunch of different variations and had a lot of fun.  My ornaments weren't quite as dimensional as hers were, I think because the fabric was so flexible, so I sewed a stack of four beads inside to hold the two sides apart and make them feel more open.

They're all 8 pointed except the one on the bottom right.  I thought I'd try to do one that was 6 pointed, but I didn't think it through quite right and wound up with 12 points, too many strips, and difficulty in assembly; thus only one like that!

This one had extra layers of weaving.  I like how it looked (in fact I kept this one) but it didn't line up quite right and turned out to be kind of a pain to make so I only did one.

Merry Christmas!

I'm still busily plugging away at the to-finish-before-Christmas projects, but we've started celebrating already here and I'm trying to lighten up a little bit.  Good Christmas music and time with Mike have helped!

Many apologies to those who are tired of seeing this quilt, but I think only a couple more posts and it'll be finished!  I've finished quilting the new Mandala, and am now working on beading the animal eyes.  After that it's just binding and adding the label and pocket then this one can go off to its new home.

And finally, a gratuitous dog picture, because everyone needs one of those.

Wishing you all a joyful and peaceful Christmas and holiday season!

Quilting Progress

I've been quilting along on my new animal mandala, you can see some of the progress below.  I've also been working on some projects for Christmas and trying to find the advent spirit amid the stress and chaos whirling around.

Last night, Mike and I drove around to look at Christmas lights- this is one of my favorite traditions for the two of us.  As always, the lights at Chesapeake were lovely.

Two messages from my advent calendar in the last week that particularly struck me.  "In the 6th century, St. Benedict began his monastic rule with the word 'listen'.  Not a bad word to carry into advent." and "Mary carried Jesus, God's love and truth, into the world.  We can do that too."  I'm trying.

Baby Quilt for Camille

One of our good friends is having a baby after the first of the year, so of course I had to make her a baby quilt.  She's actually an extremely talented singer and songwriter (Camille Harp), you should check out her music.  Many of Mike and my first dates were at her shows and we still go hear her whenever we can.

Anyway, I made her a scrappy baby quilt using fun things from my stash.  It was so fun to go through and remember what projects everything was from. I also included a tiny teddy bear I crocheted (from this book) on the way home from Thanksgiving and an embroidered burp cloth and bib.  I made several other scrappy tops while I was at it, and I'll probably donate most of them (when I get a chance to quilt them), but I'm out of time at the moment!

 

I hope Camille, Tom, and the baby enjoy these!