Posted by Ethne~
When I was pregnant with the girls and on bed rest that last month, I made a SugarPlum Fairy Christmas stocking for KD. Whit made an identical one for Easy Mac.
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| My Rudolph made by my Grandma H; Shaun's Frosty made by me; Theodore's, made in China |
Its details are intricate and it is amazing. It also will be the last stocking I ever embroider. It took an inordinate amount of work. Anymore family members will have to have character stockings more akin to my Rudolph (made by my Grandma H) and Shaun’s Frosty (made by me, and modeled after the Frosty stocking his mom made for him when he was a kid).
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| KD's - I am in awe of every stitch |
Stockings aside, I’d been wanting an Advent calendar for a long time when I ran across this embroidery kit for one. Super cute, right?
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| Le Felt Marathon |
Yeah. It sat for two years untouched in my basement.
This year I pulled it out, determined that I would have it for this year’s Christmas countdown. But instead of all the stitching I used puffy paint and a whole lot of craft glue.
First, I stitched the green strips of felt onto the mail felt backing fabric – by machine, not hand. I glued the red numbered squares and puffy-painted the days on.
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| Ah, the magic of puffy paint; I don't think it gets 'puffy' anymore, but I'll always call it that a la '80's. |
Next, I glued the felt lightbulbs onto the bottom and glued sequins on. Instead of the candy cane, I used black puffy paint and wrote Merry Christmas!! The rest was covered with glued-on white sequins.
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| Use Fabri-Tac glue. Nothing else will hold as well. TRUST ME. |
For the top I decided I wasn’t super fond of the snowmen. Fortunately I found these cute felt reindeer and Santa characters at Target for $2. Best part – they were a glue-together activity the girls could help me with.
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| I used the silver ribbon to make reins for Santa to hold; I sewed those buttons on (discussed below) |
Santa and his reindeer were glued onto the ‘roof’ and I used silver thread to make reins. White sequins filled in all the gaps on top too.
I didn’t want to make all the white felt ornaments for each daily pocket, so I found 12-packs of mini ornaments to use instead – 50% off at Joann, so $6 total. One set are Christmas figures and one set are the Nativity. I was missing a 25th ornament but found a mini Rudolph in my decorations that will be perfect.
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| Easy Mac and the felt ornaments |
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| KD and the mini ornaments |
One slightly tedious step was sewing a button above each pocket to hang the little ornament on, rather than sewing the ornaments into the pockets themselves (which in my estimation would’ve been more tedious).
Last, I needed a way to hang it. I used my stash of craft keyrings and sewed three to the top back of the calendar – each 6” apart from the other. This made it easy to line up the rings onto 3M removable hooks.
Done!
I won’t say it wasn’t a bit time consuming, but it was light years faster than the fully-embroidered version would’ve been. I’m thrilled with how it turned out.
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