Christmas Decorations!

My blog feed is jam-packed with Christmassy posts lately so it’s about time I joined in, isn’t it?

So here are my most recent makes – little Christmas trees with cinnamon sticks as their trunks.

Lucie @ Love, Lucie reminded me that I wanted to make some of these after I spotted them in Love Sewing magazine. Hers were so cute I wasn’t sure if mine would could contend with them… But I have to say I’m quite pleased with how they turned out. I envisaged them to be made in either a rustic kind of fabric, or cute Christmassy fabric – but I realised I didn’t even buy any Christmas fabric this year. It’s come around so fast!! So I made do with what I have already. I found the cute greenery fabric in my  stash, and the red was free with Love Sewing magazine (which I had forgotten about!)

I also made another one in a polka dot cotton, but this happened…

Urgh. I just need to unpick that top bit and re-sew, but can I be bothered? Maybe one day…

And I messed up the cutting out of the red patterned fabric (I cut a corner off somehow) so I was down to only one red tree and three green.

I just love the cinnamon sticks used for the trunks. My youngest does too… the jar of them kept her occupied for ages whilst I stitched them in place – she kept taking the lid off and smelling them before offering them to everyone else to smell. Bless her, she’s easily pleased.

I intended to make a garland with them, but because the numbers decreased, and I have three of the same design, I’m just leaving them as hanging decorations. And because I don’t really need three identical trees, I’ve decided to send one to my #sewingsanta recipient, and one to a friend. I’m keeping one green and the only red one for myself 😛

Here they are hung on my tree – next to my cute robin I made last year:

And whilst we’re on the subject of decorations, at the weekend my daughter and I had a productive Hama bead session. You’re never too old for these fiddly yet addictive beads!! I made a Santa and a snowflake, which I’m rather proud of and I won’t mention the fact that I simply copied the designs from the Inspiration book and Pinterest…Oops.

I should have thought about the fact that I was going to hang them before I ironed them because I now can’t thread the string though the holes of the snowflake as they melted shut… You live and learn, I suppose.

Finally I had better share some photos of the bunting I contributed to and some of you did ask. (You may have read my post about my ‘r’ – as a group of parents we made a string of bunting reading ‘Merry Christmas’ to be hung at my local Children’s Centre.) Well, here it is!

It turned out really well, particularly considering that we all have different levels of sewing skills and we didn’t know what others were doing on theirs; the end result works really well.

Merry Christmas!!

Beth x