Advent calender for my nieces - finished

As so often it was a rush in the end but I did manage to finish the 2nd of the Advent Calenders for my lovely nieces Sophia and Lily a few weeks back and they are now hanging in their respective rooms filled with treasures and raided with much anticipation every morning.



I really enjoyed making these and am very happy with how they have turned out, knowing they will bring them joy for many years to come. In fact my nephew for whom I made one in 2011 is now 9 years old and only recently started to feel a little to "grown up" for it. Frankly he used it way more years than I anticipated.

And with that I am singing off for this year and would like to wish everybody reading this blog a very happy Christmas and New Year and much creativity to come in 2018. Thank you for visiting and reading about my creative adventures.

Previous posts on the progress of the Advent Calendars calendars can be found here and here.

Advent Calendar for my nieces - part 2-

The first calendar (for Sophia) is finished and it really wasn't as much work as I thought and it was enormous fun too.

But in order to reduce the workload I made a few clever decisions. I invested in plastic number and letter templates instead of creating templates myself which saved an enormous amount of time. I simply ironed bondaweb onto the wrong side of the fabric, placed the templates on the right sight, drew around it with a pen, cut them out with scissor and ironed them onto the 10 x 10 pre-cut fabric pieces. This part of the process took no more than 2 hours.
I bought the templates on ebay and they are really good, come in a box and are of course reusable for ever.

I then affixed the numbers and letters (again by machine) permanently with an appliqué blanket stitch. This took a little while of course but again not to bad and to be honest I wasn't going for perfection. 

The rest is  straight forward. I basically made a quilt using a light grey as background so that the coloured and patterned pockets contrast well and therefore stand out. I quilted it in 1/2 in straight lines and bound it in a turquoise fabric that is also from the Cotton & Steele Noel collection.

All pockets are lined to give them better structure and are attached to the quilt by machine. I sewed over the edges several times as I can imagine little hands grabbing them in a haste and I also think this quilt will be used as a quilt (not just a wall hanging) and toy a lot. After all 3 year old kids really don't care to much if this is a Christmas quilt or not. Imagine all the things you can put into all these pockets over an entire year.

I am already onto the quilt for Lily but am not sure if I finish it before my big trip to Japan. Let's see.

First post on this here.

Advent Calendars for my nieces - part 1 -

I was going to start this blogpost by saying "It's that time of the year again..." but that would be just too depressing. Though it actually is and in particular for us crafters because making something for Christmas, be it something decorative or a present, takes time.

In 2011 when my lovely nephew was 3 years old I made him an Advent calendar made up of 24 miniature stockings. It was incredibly cute and a huge success and best of all it is still in use although he turned nice this year. That one I also started in the Summer with the intention to make a few stockings every months. In the end I made most of them in November by assembling a production line as it turned out this was a lot of work and a bit tidies too.

Fast forward 6 years and I have two new gorgeous nieces, Sophia aged three and Lily aged one. And both are in need of an Advent calendar. I spend a few weeks thinking and researching as I really don't want to make 48 miniature stockings (that might just push me over the stocking edge...), although they really would look great in their house hanging along he stairs. Sure I could not line the stockings , not quilt them, not add a cuff at the top but then they would look just boring...

So I decided on a different design altogether. During my search I found this gorgeous quilt advent calendar from Cynthia by Ahhh... Quilting and it immediatly hit home. It's a quilt with numbered pockets attached to it. Cynthia put a lot of work into her quilt with ribbons and gorgeous quilting too but I am going to make up my own version of this and keep it altogether a little simpler.  But for those of you who might want to follow her pattern, its on sale in her Craftsy shop. I am sure it is a great pattern but I just want to follow my own path and see where it takes me.

My other hope was to to make something that may not be as much work as the stockings were....well, I have given up on that hope...in for a penny in for a pound. And I don't mind because I think I am going to enjoy this very much.

The next consideration was what fabric to use. And as most manufacturer bring out their Christmas fabric in summer, bang on time Cotton & Steel released this years festive collection called "Noel". 

Its a super fun, contemporary take on Christmas and in style quite similar to the one I used for Hauke's stocking calendar. As much as I like Christmas, what I don't like are most of the fabrics with their dark tones and overly traditional patterns. So this fit the bill perfectly. I ordered at the Fat Quarter Shop a set of forty 10 x 10 squares which will be enough fabric to make forty pockets. I also ordered a half meter each of the "Snow Babies" in red and mint for the tree and 3 more half meters of some of the other patterns, two of which are for the binding and the rest for the tree stump and for the remaining 8 pockets and generally as spare fabric. I am adding solids from stach for the numbering and background fabric.



First up is Sophia's quilt. I was able to assemble the quilt including quilting very fast.  Essentially the tree is a simple triangle with a rectangle attached surrounding by solids. The numbers are (machine) appliquéd too. Next its on to making the pockets.

Happy crafting weekend.

A finished Adventcalendar

 Last year Christmas my sister made her son an Advent calendar that was more an excuse for an Advent calendar than anything else. After I pointed this out to her she said "You are the crafty one in the family, so do something about it". She had me cornered there and then !

So I started out in May with the Making of a proper Advent calendar for my lovely 3 1/2  year old nephew Hauke. I started early knowing that I didn't want to have a mad rush in November. Mmmhh,.... it still was a bit of a rush in the end as I didn't do any stockings in the last couple of months but I still am glad that I at least made 1/3 of it earlier in the year.

These are quite a bit of work as I lined them all but they are also good fun and I am so so happy with the end results. Aren't they cute ? My sister asked me to make 4 stockings larger for each Advent Sunday and I think that works well in the overall look.

I used a fat quarter set of the 2011 Christmas collection by Michael Miller which was plenty. I also used it for the lining plus some leftovers of solid white I had lying around.

I posted already a tutorial (here) and templates earlier in the year in case you wish to make one for you family, friend or god children too.

Previous post can be found here and here.
 

Advents calendar stocking tutorial

I had a few people asking for a tutorial for my Advents calendar stockings . So I thought I oblige as we are nearing Christmas in alarming speed !

Few important points up front:

• This is an excellent way to use leftovers from past Christmas crafting ventures, though I am using a fat quarter set of Michael Millers's 2011 Christmas collection (as I didn't have enough leftovers)
• My stockings are lined but I don't think that this is strictly necessary - I just like them to look neat
• The individual stockings aren't particularly large as they are just meant for small little somethings through the time of Advent but I have created two template sizes as I want to make 4 stockings that are larger for the Advent Sundays.
• I choose to make each months 4 (or 8 every two month as I tend to forget !) but you can easily make a little production line and get it over and done with in one weekend

Material:

• patterned cotton scraps from past x-mas or a fat eights or fat quarter set of a new collection (that is plenty and will give you enough to make other bits for the festive period)
• leftover wadding
• solid cotton scraps for lining (but you could also use patterned here if you prefer)
• cotton thread for piecing
• cotton thread for quilting
• Template(s) can be downloaded here (The smaller one is to be used for 20 stockings and the larger one for 4 as I want to have a "larger" present for the Advent Sundays

Take a piece of fabric and fold it over from left to right as in the picture. This is important when you have a directional print as you don't want to end up having one half of the stocking upside down.

Download the stocking template, cut it out along the line and pin it onto the folded fabric. Then cut out the first stocking. 1/4 inch seam allowance is already included in the template !

You will end up with two stockings like this where the directional prints go into the same direction.

Then repeat the same process with the wadding and the lining (though you don't need to worry about print direction here). You should end up with 3 pair of booties like in the image below.

Next take your print booties and your wadding booties, pin them together and quilt in which ever pattern you prefer. I have chose to do diagonal lines that form a diamond pattern. I have not marked any lines here and just started to quilt from the top left corner to the bottom right corner and then set the quilt guide on my machine to a 3/4 inch distance and kept this for the subsequent lines. When have you done this with both stocking halfs it should look like this.

Now cut 2 strips of contrasting fabric that are each 4 x 2 inches.

Turn the strips right sides down and press the long edges a 1/4 inch toward the wrong side.You can either finger press this or use and iron - I am using an iron.

Then turn the strips around, place them on the stocking halfs a 1/4 inch below the top edge thereby taking care that the folded and pressed edges are turned in. Then top stitch along the top and bottom edge to secure the strip to the stocking.

It should look like this (sorry for the blurred photo):
The reason why I am doing these sort of fake cuffs is to minimize bulk. There are tutorials around for stockings with great cuffs but these are for large stocking and not for tiny ones likes these that are made into an Advent calendar.

Cut the excess fabric off to get a clean edge.

Take both booties, put the right sides together and stitch a 1/4 around the whole stocking with the exception of the opening at the top !

Now take both lining stocking halfs and sew them together in the same manner.

Almost there. Now we put the patterned stocking and lining stocking together.  Take the patterned stocking and turn the wadding side inside and the patterned side outside (the way it should look finished) and simply put the lining stocking with the wrong side outside (!) over it.

Stitch a scant 1/4 inch along the top leaving a large enough area open to turn the stocking around. Make sure you stitch over both side seams  (see black arrows in photo) which means you would leave the area between the side seam on one side of the stocking open to turn it around. The reason why I am asking to do this will become clear in a moment.

Turn the stocking inside out. You will end up with this. The stocking will be almost finished with the right side on the outside. Tuck the lining into the stocking make sure to push it right into the corners.
The only thing that is now left to do is close the opening you have used to turn the stocking around with a few hand sewn stitches. And it is much quicker to close this if you don't have to do it over the somewhat bulky side seams.

Done !

 And in no time you have a bunch of these:

And yes I am behind again. By the end of this month I will have to have produced 16 in total.....better get on with it then.

Please let me know if something is not clear, wrong or confusion. This my first big tutorial and I would be grateful if you could  give me honest feedback as only then I can learn from mistakes.

Advents calendar - June and July progress

I didn't do any stockings for the Advents calendar for my nephew in June so I had to do a double set this months. I also changed tack a bit and made them slightly larger than the first prototypes and I also used a collection of x-mas fabric from Michael Miller.

Eight down, 16 to go which makes it four for every month until November. Can you believe that it is already November in 4 months time......ugly ugly thought....

First post of my Advent calendar project can be found here.



June lot



July lot




Getting there



Advent calendar

Yes you read correctly. I know, I know we are only halfway through Spring and I am talking about x-mas. And the funny thing is I am not even a big Christmas person. I bit more these days though because I have a little 3 year old nephew but generally we keep it low key in the family.

But here is the thing. Last year when I visited my sisters Anja in December for a few trips to a proper Christmas Market (in Bremen) she had put up an Advent calendar for Hauke (her son, my nephew) which was some improvised thing where she put little presents in patterned tissue paper on a string.

It was a poor attempt, no point in talking it sweet. And of course I wasted no time in telling her to which she responded something along the lines that it was me who was the creative in the family who could do something about it. So I offered to sew something much nicer for this year Christmas.

So, my plan is to sew a couple of those little stockings every months so I won't have to do something in a mad rush 3 days before Advent starts. Besides I am channeling here my inner and outer German organisation skills.

I bought some discounted x-mas fabric from last year at my local quilt shop but I have also ordered some new patterns from Michael Miller that will hopefully arrive in the next couple of weeks.

I have made a separate Advent calendar page on the blog where I add images of each new little stocking I make so you can follow my progress. Last night I made two and it really was great fun. I might even make enough for two calendars. I couldn't put both of them together on the rope as I only have one wooden cloth peg at the moment and that is even borrowed from my lovely neighbours. I want to secure the stockings with wooden cloth pegs because then my sister can put the calender high enough so Hauke can't raid it early but she can also take the stockings off easily to give every day one to him so he can find his little present in there. I won't put any numbers on the stocking as I think they are to small and it would clutter the design unnecessarily but might do something with numbers on the pegs. Let's see.
Anyone fancy a tutorial on how to make this Advent calendar ?