As this will probably be my last post before the festive season really gets underway I would like to wish you all a very Happy Christmas and a lovely 2010. 

We have just returned from Worcester where we were visiting my sister. We visited the German Market in Birmingham while we were there to have lunch of sausages, pretzel and chocolate dipped fruit and marshmallow skewers. 

Ellen is most excited to have returned to snow. They have not had any in Worcester and she was worried that the snow we had last week would have gone by the time she got here but no we got back and the world was even more white than when we left. 

So much snow that we have had to do our Xmas food shopping at the local store rather than go into town as at the moment taxis are not coming up our road. I did go into town for a few special things today (have treated myself to the Nigella Christmas cookbook so needed some more exotic ingredients!) so we are now fully stocked. 

We plan to spend some time baking together tomorrow – making and decorating the yule log, making cranberry and white chocolate cookies, putting together the gingerbread house and decorating the Christmas cake. Ellie and I are going to Christingle service at one of our local churches.

 I have masses of stitching and knitting to show you after Xmas that cannot be revealed now but I can show you the ornie that I sent to Marlene in the US as part of the ASOE exchange. This is a design called Noel by Helga Mandl – if you look carefully at the tree the word Noel is spelt out (on each half of the tree -you will have to look at the pic sideways for it to make sense). 

We had our Embroiderers’  Guild Xmas meal last week and I was very pleased to see that Barbara, my very talented friend, had made some little trees for table decorations following my instructions on the blog. Here are some pics  of the trees and their maker. 

I do hope that you have a very lovely time with good food, good company and lots of time for relaxing and stitching. Jake and I are off to Spain for New Year for some sun and warm fingers! 

Happy Xmas and happy stitching! Thanks for visiting.

We have had a very lovely and very busy weekend starting with the annual Festival of Light in the town centre on Friday night. This event is always a street theatre of some kind with a grand fireworks finale.  

This year it was a group from France called Trance Express who led a parade round town with a float containing a rock band and two huge drums played by men on swinging trapeze. They were followed by a band of drummers and flares. When they got to the square where the final performance was held there was a very large crane and the singing group appeared suspended from it and performed a couple of numbers while swinging above the crowd.  

Then there was an excellent fireworks display – I do love big fireworks!  

We then went for a lovely meal on Sat to our friends Taru and Bob’s where Jake and I had excellent food, excellent company and excellent wine (in my case not Jake’s!)  

Sunday I spent most of the day decorating the house for Xmas – a little bit earlier than usual but I do love Xmas decs and the poor things have been in a cold garage for long enough – they need to be out to be admired. I have posted pics of the main decs before and not much has changed in the layout but I do have a few special new bought things to show you.  

Every year I like to buy something special and a couple of years ago at Disneyland in Florida I bought this very cute Minnie and Mickey for the tree.  

 We are big Disney fans and love visiting Disneyland and you may remember that we went this year in March for Ellie’s 18th where I chose this lovely sparkly decoration … 

Ellie wanted to buy a decoration and she chose this very cute Tinkerbell inside a bell that rings.  

 Last year I also bought these lovely little ornies – they are supposed to hang from a tree but I think they look better on the hearth.  

 All my hand-made decs are all over the house now and I think I may have to make some more for next year as there are just never enough baubles in some places! I will leave you with a nice pic of the tree all lit up.  

Hope you have fun preparing for Xmas – now back to the stitching! Thank you for visiting.

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.