Christmas Craft

 

 

 

  

 

This is the beginning of my Christmasy projects. This weekend I got all inspired to sew again and it was partly to do with a few things:

@ A comment my husband had made "You love sewing. You are so happy when you sew!"

@ frankie. I even indulged yesterday evening by telling my husband "I'm just going to run a bath for myself." It was the kids' dinner time and he knew that was code for "Can you please make dinner for the kids while I have some 'me' time?" I lay there, submerged, reading frankie.

@ Xmas. I do love an excuse to make and buy some interesting things but I do hate the commercialism. Mum gave me a bag of Christmas fabric scraps not long ago. I remembered that I have a Xmas tree decoration that my mum made when I was a baby. She traced my hand, dyed some fabric (using onion skin dye) then cut two templates of my hand. She then sewed them together, stuffed them and added a little ribbon to hang on the tree. 

@ That there, Xmas, is no better an excuse than to MAKE & SEW. 

I had some painted hand prints and footprints from my children from a few months ago so I used these to make my templates. 

* Trace the hand prints and footprints onto calico, cut those out then trace around those on Christmasy style fabric (keeping to the original print as much as possible.) 

 

* Cut out two identical sized pieces of fabric and sew the footprint and hand print to them. 

* Sew them together inside out leaving a small gap to squeeze stuffing in and to attach the ribbon.

* Turned them in the right way and filled them with hobby fill stuffing. 

* Carefully place the two ends of a short piece of ribbon (20cm) inside the gap and machine sew the gap closed (remembering to sew those raw edges inside.)

These may seem like a dud pressie for a child but give a few years I think they'll enjoy getting them out each year and comparing them to how big their hands and feet are. 

** The second decoration I made is much neater because I sewed the hand print and footprint on using the machine BEFORE I sewed the two pieces stuffed it. (I hand-sewed my daughter's so it's not nearly as neat.)