Another Afghan

I finished another baby afghan (and am well on my way with another one).  This one was fun to make. I used a variegated yarn of peach, yellow, white, and light orange.  It was fun to work with.

Here is a close-up of the stitching.  I crocheted a single crochet into the back loop.  I like how it looks.

Then I finished it with a yellow scalloped border all the way around.  I like how that sets it off.  The afghan is on its way to a new baby.  Hope she likes it!

RePurposed Christmas Cards

With Christmas over, I was doing some cleaning up and came across a bundle of Christmas cards we received in 2011.

These Christmas cards were so pretty, and I decided I would keep some of that prettiness to use again.  So I cut out parts of the cards to use as gift tags for next year.

Here are some close-ups.

Cute kittens and silver snowflakes.

Love the one that looks like a quilt in the photo above.

I got out the fancy-edge scissors for some of them.

Now all they need is a hole punched and ribbon or string tied onto them.  

One fortunate thing I found was a card with a nice circle on the front of it.  So I was able to use that to draw circles on the cards and cut out round tags.  It would be fun to use some other shapes, too, wouldn't it.  Like maybe a star or a Santa boot or a stocking.  And I just remembered that I have a tag-shaped punch which I could use, too.   I'll have to remember these ideas for next year!

Embroidered Ornaments

Last year I made a set of these ornaments for a dear friend.  This year I made another set for Dear Daughter-In-LawStitches.  She was so happy to receive them.  And they are such fun to stitch.  

Here is the set of four.

The first one is the creche scene.

Creche.

 The second one is Santa flying over the rooftops.

Santa over rooftops.

Then there is the Christmas tree.  Looks a little like Charlie Brown might have chosen 

this one, doesn't it.

And finally, the snowman, complete with carrot nose.

Snowman.

I made these using tea-dyed muslin, from a Bare Roots pattern.  I like how well the white snowman stands out against the darker background. 

They are quite small, the square ones being about 4 or 5 inches square, and the larger ones about 4" by 6".  Maybe one of these days I'll make some for myself.

Christmas Ornaments

I guess I've probably won the Bad Blogger Award, for having let so much time go by since my last post.  Sorry 'bout that.  Let's just say that the holidays kind of took over my life!

Since we travelled this Christmas, and weren't at home, MisterStitches and I didn't have a Christmas tree.  But I wanted to display some of my tree ornaments, so I found this nifty ornament holder at Crate and Barrel.

It worked very well for my purposes.  See, it has a little "scalloped" edge where the 

ornament hangers go.

I put a lot of hand-made ornaments on it, and filled in with some simple Christmas balls.  My goal is to have only hand-made ornaments for this display.

Following are two precious ornaments brought home from school by my two kids, many years ago.  The one with DaughterStitches's photo on it says 1989, so she would have been 7 years old, probably in first grade.  Now DaughterStitches teaches in her own classroom, sometimes first grade, sometimes second, sometimes both. 

I believe these two ornaments came home the same year, so SonStitches would have been 5 years old, and in Transitional Kindergarten.  I love these two ornaments.

This next ornament is one I started a long time ago and just finished this year.  I found a picture of it on the internet and made up my own version.

One year I made several little mitten ornaments from felted wool.  Some of the wool came from an old pleated skirt of mine (not this red one!).

Several years ago I blogged about this reindeer ornament made from a wine cork.  I think he's awfully cute, don't you?

A Christmas tree ornament made from a kit a few years ago.

The following two ornaments are ones I made when we were on a trip to Hawaii.  The first is a sea turtle (honu).  They are both made from luahala leaves.

What fun ornaments have you made in your life?  Or which homemade ornaments do you have that you treasure?

Some Embroidery Work

I recently finished this small wall hanging.  It is a pattern that I bought from Jenny of Elefantz.  She has loads of great designs.  You should check out her blog and website.  Jenny specializes in beautiful designs which often combine applique and embroidery. This particular wall hanging I made is only 11" by 12".  It is one of four little wonky houses in the set.

The light blue border is one of my go-to fabrics lately, by HarmonyArt Organic Fabric.  Maybe it's just handy for me, but I seem to be using it in quite a few projects lately.

Here is a close-up of some of the embroidery.  As you can see, it is quite detailed.  I have to say this was quite a bit of fun to do.

A Christmas Tree Shirt for GranddaughterStitches

I just finished a new little Christmas shirt for GranddaughterStitches.  I found the great tutorial here.  (Thanks, VixenMade!)  Since she gave such a thorough tutorial, I won't bother to repeat it here.

I bought a simple long-sleeved t-shirt, some green lace, and sequins.  I used WonderUnder to fuse the lace to the shirt.

Then I sewed all the way around the edges to secure it before adding the sequins.

I used invisible thread to sew on the sequins.  Kind of a pain to work with, but the stitches hardly show at all!

DaughterStitches told me that GranddaughterStitches loved receiving the shirt in the mail.  She really likes all the "jewels" on the tree, but can't decide which color she likes best.  Oh, such problems!

Christmas Decorations

Yesterday, on December 1st, was Christmas decorating day at our house.  But the first decoration has been up since last week, when GranddaughterStitches (and her mom!) were visiting us for Thanksgiving.

MisterStitches and I found this cute little creche made by Playmobile, and thought it would be great for GranddaughterStitches.  I mean, kids always want to play with the creche characters, right?  And we usually respond by saying, "No, no.  Don't touch."  Well, this is a creche that she is supposed to play with!

We all had fun putting the whole scene together, assembling the stable, and fixing all the small details. Above you can see the three wise men, part of their camel, and Joseph's donkey.

GranddaughterStitches, for some reason, liked having the little lamb on the roof, along with the doves!