One of the things that I really wanted to do from my Creative Textiles class was to be able to do things without patterns that were just truly creative and I am pleased to say that today I have been doing just that. I have previously done some crazy patchwork when I made a bag for my Mum for her birthday earlier this year but that was still a very planned project where I did buy many of the items rather than just have them to hand.

I have been making Xmas ornies as you know and have been saving all of the small fabric scraps with a view to making something with them.

Every year I buy some mini poinsettias to decorate the house and so have been left with very pretty little pots when the plants die.

I had seen on someone’s blog a while ago (I forget who) little fabric trees so decided today to combine the idea of crazy patchwork that we have been looking at in the Creative Textiles class with my little pots to make some table decorations for Xmas.

First I made a tree template by drawing round a plate on brown paper then wrapping this on itself to make a cone shape and cutting the excess paper to give me a pattern. I then cut this shape out of some spare red fabric I had.

I then ironed the same shaped piece of bondaweb onto the fabric.

Once I had peeled off the backing paper I then laid my fabric scraps on top of the bondaweb then when complete ironed the whole thing.

This makes them stick to the bondaweb apart from a few bits where they overlap but gives you a robust enough fabric sandwich to cut off the excess.

I then machined the pice to cover the joins – I have a very basic sewing machine that jams a lot so the stitching is not perfect and I had to go over each seam a couple of times to even up the stitching. I used the zig zag stitch as it was the best looking stitch for the job. I was tempted to hand embroider these this being my preferred technique but am trying to expand my repertoire so did use the machine though did only get one tree stitched due to jamming! The other one will be finished at a later date!

Then I folded the right sides together and stitched the seam by hand as the fabric was a bit thick to go through my temperamental machine!

I then turned it right side out and voila!

I had originally planned to stuff the tree with wadding and sew a felt circle onto the bottom but once I had sewn it to this stage realised that it was stiff enough with the two layers of fabric and bondaweb to stand on its own so just trimmed the bottom with some gold braid from my stash and then added one of my little brass charms sewn to the top.

I am very, very pleased with this – I do need to buy some florists’  foam to put in the base of the pot as at the moment this is held up by a pencil stuck in blu tak but this is an orginal idea made by me which has not cost anything at all as it has all come from my stash!

I am going to take it to class tomorrow to show it off.

Below are a few more pics from our Xmas here – we had a little pretend Xmas day before we went to Spain including eating of one of my limted edition Project Nepal fundraising Xmas puds. And the kids got to have a proper Xmas dinner which of course they don’t get when we are in Spain (poor deprived little dears!).

I learnt to use the internet about 10 years ago and at the time learnt how to write web pages using HTML – not that I have really needed to use this since. However it has come in very handy in putting together this blog as I at least have a working knowledge of how to structure the pages, move pictures etc. Just shows that you never know when some little bit of knowledge will come in handy! I have put together a little slide show of some of our pics from re-enactment on the medieval re-enactment page so I hope you like them – quite a few are taken this year at Jennie and Blackie’s medieval wedding (see Finishes 2007 page for more on that).

We have finished putting up all the Xmas decorations – I do have some pictures to post but the little creative geniuses that are my children have got the lead for the digital camera somewhere in one of their rooms as they have been making models out of Plasticine and filming little animations with our camera (anyone remember Morph?) so that will have to wait.

 I have been trying to finish one of the last of my cross stitch ornies that I am using some of the wonderful sparkly fabric for. Unfortunately I have chosen a very high count fabric (at least 28 if not more) so am having trouble seeing it and have had to do lots of unpicking! It does however have to be finished by Friday as it is a present for a friend and she is coming here on Sat which is the last time I will see her before we fly to Spain on Monday 17th (yippee). My Mum lives in Spain so we are there for Xmas – she keeps ringing and telling me how hot it is there and it is very wet and cold here so I can’t wait.

I also have to finish off the last of the other snowflakes that I have made as I am giving these instead of Xmas cards this year. The pic shows them almost done – I just have to stuff with wadding and sew up but I am out tomorrow having an Xmas meal with people from work so that will have to wait till Weds. I can see that despite starting in Sept I will still be finishing off my Xmas stuff at 2 am the morning before as usual! Hope that you are all a lot more organised!