Embroidery for Stockings

We are only a few weeks away from Christmas and I actually have a Christmas related project. Earlier in the summer I embroidered these six stockings for a client. We went with a smaller font because we had to fit a name between two stars on one of the blue stockings. I used the same font size for the rest of the stockings so that was the determining stocking. I used a few different colored threads, the dark blue stockings have white, the two stockings that have an aqua blue on them I used aqua and for the final two stockings I used a navy blue. The stocking colors were taken from that sweet blue and white nativity on the mantel.

 

 

Here is a closer shot of the embroidery, looking back I wish I could have made the names bigger but I think they are happy.


Then this client told a friend that I had done her stockings so I embroidered this family's stockings a month ago. She wanted the names large across the top of the stockings and we played with the font a bit until we got what she wanted. She was thinking of doing green on the red and red on the green but white thread looks much better. Stands out and unifies them.

These stockings had two layers and I had a hard time getting them to not pucker when I was sewing. I started and stopped a ton of times but couldn't get it to not pucker. I have a great machine that was expensive but it isn't as great as those really expensive machines.

One day I would love to have a fireplace and mantel to hang our stockings from, we don't have anything like that now so we have to hang them from the tv cabinet. HA I guess we could play the fireplace vhs that they used to have so that it looks like the tv is a fireplace. I also have not purchased stockings for my two kiddos and my husband uses an old stocking that we had left over at work. I need to figure out what to get. I love my crochet stocking from when I was a kid but I don't know who I would have do it. I could get more stockings like my husband but they are expensive! I do know that I want them all to match so maybe I can make my own. All I know for sure is that it will not be happening by Christmas. ;) Good thing they are too young to know any better.

Merry Christmas!

I had to just pop in to say Merry Christmas to everyone! I hope that you have a blessed Christmas and are able to spend at least part of the day with someone special in your life. I always feel so badly for those who live far away from family or are over seas for the holiday season. We are so blessed to have family on both sides here in town and get to see a lot of them on Christmas or over the Christmas season.

I also hope everyone stays well, it sounds like there is a lot of sickness going around and I know I always catch something over the holidays, just when I finally get a break from work.

Last year I spent a lot of time making these great Christmas cards which I posted about here. I loved making them and hope that everyone enjoyed them. This year with the baby coming anytime now I decided I had to make our cards easy and simple. I used one of our maternity session pictures, you can see more of them here, and made a Christmas picture card. The photographers, who I just love, asked if they could post my card on their blog, check out the post here. It was also so nice of them to mention my blog on there as well. I hope you will pop by and see what they do to thank them for talking about me on their blog.

Well without further ado....here is our Christmas Card this year. I hope that they have made their way into your home already, if not they should arrive soon. For all of my blog stalkers out there, here is your Christmas Card! Enjoy.

Merry Christmas!

New Fabric/New Find Friday #49

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas! Well it is Christmas Eve to be exact and I wanted to show you some Christmas fabrics that I picked up a few weeks ago. I love Christmas time and all that goes into it, seeing family, giving and getting Christmas cards, and putting up the tree. I do not always love Christmas fabrics, sometimes they just look so dated or not modern enough. I was on the hunt for some fabric for a project and came across these.

I love the red tree fabric, how cute those little trees going every which way. This is what I ended up using for a project and just wait until you see what I did with it. The second fabric, the green with trees inside of wreaths, I was borderline on liking so I just got a small piece. I am not sure what I will do with this yet but I like that it almost looks like a small dot from far away. The third fabric was considered a Christmas fabric but it really did not look like one to me. I mean I can see how you can call it sort of a modern snowflake circle design but it could be just a great red pattern. The fourth fabric is not a Christmas fabric but like the one before it looks like a big modern snowflake and could be used for Christmas or just as a red patterned fabric.

I am not sure what I am going to do with all of these but I love having some Christmas fabrics in my stash for when I might need them. Maybe next year I will make new stockings for our family since we do not yet have one for baby and will need one next year. Some of these fabrics could come in handy then. We will see.

Merry Christmas Eve, stay safe and I hope you are out enjoying family and friends....and not doing last minute shopping! :)

Christmas Hand Towels

My mother-in-law loves fabric as much as I do and has about 30 Rubbermaid binds FULL of fabrics. There is stuff in there from the 70's up to present time and it is always fun to see what I can find in there. I looked through a few years ago and took a bunch of her stuff while she was cleaning house and have yet to use them but know they will come in handy with a baby.

She also has a few unfinished projects and these were a few of the ones she had. I told her that I would take them and finish them for her. That was about two years ago and I am finally getting around to it. So thank goodness she does not get on the internet because these are part of her Christmas present.

She had the towels already and the two pieces of fabric that she wanted to sew on them. The fabric that went with the blue towel had rows and rows of different Christmas scenes and I choose this Santa and sleigh to go with the blue towel because it had more colors that would coordinate with the blue.

The fabric she had for the green towels she had already cut out into small strips so I just washed them and sewed them to the towels. Pretty easy and they really do look cute. I am not sure if this is something that she will put in her kitchen or bathroom, we will see what she does after I give them to her.

I have a few more towels that I bought a few years ago that I would love to do some applique or embroidery on for our house and some gifts. I just need to find the right fabric to go with the towels I have and then I will be set.

I still have a lot of Christmas presents to get/make but at least this one is finished!

In Need of a Christmas Gift?

I have these baby leggings ready for Christmas/Winter and found this cute fabric to go with it. Does anyone need any leggings with a matching onesie/shirt for a Christmas gift? The top could have an initial, an ornament shape, the word joy, a Christmas tree, a tie, or something else that we can come up with together out of the fabric.

I am accepting Christmas orders until December 1st so email me and let me know if you would like to place an order for this or something else.

Advent Ornaments Part II

We started this tradition our first year of marriage (or was it last year...I can't remember) to put up the Christmas Tree on Thanksgiving and not put ornaments on it until the week of Christmas.

Instead we decided to celebrate Advent and put up a "Jesse Tree" well we really just use our regular tree for the Jesse Tree but it still works. Last year all I had were pieces of paper that I printed to put on the tree and boy did it look sad, you couldn't even tell what they were so this year I decided to make the ornaments. I was already planning to make ornaments out of light bulbs and was collecting them from everyone so I decided to use all of the standard size bulbs for the Jesse Tree ornaments.

I luckily had some images to work from and started last week while I was home sick and managed to get all of them finished (28 in all) on Monday.

Here is a picture of all of them on the "Jessee Tree" and I am so excited to use them next year the way we intend to use them, one on the tree at a time.



For those of you who do not know about the Jesse Tree, it is an Advent devotional that helps you prepare for the coming of Christ before the Christmas season. The Jesse tree represents the genealogy of Jesus and it tells about God's salvation plan from creation to the coming of Christ using readings from both the Old and New Testaments. Each day you put a different ornament on the tree that has a symbol on it corresponding to passage you read from the Bible, it starts in Genesis and continues though the Gospels to the Birth of Christ.

These are a few of them close up, notice the stump of Jesse, the apple and the serpent, Noah's Ark, a shell, a candle, and at the bottom Joseph's amazingly colored coat!

Some ones you might know...the ten commandments and baby Jesus at the top! Not only do we think that these are fun but we can not wait to share this tradition with our kids one day. Who wouldn't love to put one of these on the tree each day!

Advent Ornaments in progress....

Well it must be Christmas because I am posting three posts in one day!!! Amazing!

I was sick last week so I had a chance to get a few things done that have been on my list. I really wanted to get these ornaments done before the Advent season started 4 weeks ago but instead I was working on my Christmas Cards and those took longer than expected so I am now catching up.

Well thanks to my handyman husband who changes many a light bulb during the day I have finally collected enough to get started. Thanks to all of those who after reading this offered some bulbs....I am still accepting. :) Here they are in my "light bulb box."

Here they are with the first step of just painting the base coat. I have finished this on all of them and now just need to print the scene on the last 10.

I hope to have pictures of them close up and on the tree in the next couple of days. In that post I will explain what I am painting on them and the Jessie Tree concept. Until next time!

Christmas Cards 2009

I have been wanting to post about this for a long time but I wanted to send them out first so they were a surprise.

I started working on these Christmas cards back in November or earlier, getting magazine ads pulled, cutting them up and folding them to make my little Christmas trees on the front of the card. It was a labor of love but I was so excited to do it after having received one of these cards in the mail at work years ago. The time has finally come for me to send them out.

Here is my workspace (dining table) covered with 100+ Christmas cards in progress.
Here are different ones...there were way too many different ones to take pictures of all of them but I loved how different they were, some all green, some all red, and some had more than one color.

When sending them I tried to match the person with the card sending someone who loves pink a pink one etc. It might not be as obvious to them why they got the one they did but to me I was thinking of each person as I sent it to them.

Here is a profile of the tree and the inside stamp. I did not take a picture of it but I had a stamp finally made with this blog address on it that I am excited to use on more of my notecards in the future.

The only problem I ran into was that my computer printer did NOT like me while I was printing and so some of the addresses were not that perfect. Sorry! Something to improve upon.

Merry Christmas!