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.