Advent Calendar, Day 11: Cardinal

This is one of those pieces in the calendar which shows you that it's not very English!  But I love cardinals, and am glad to have one in my advent calendar, as I won't ever get one in my back garden...

Cross stitch update

I know it's not Wednesday, but I finished the Chickadee, so I wanted to show it. It needs a frame, but it's done (and cute).   Next up...

yep.  The Christmas Angels. I will start working on the green dress this year (assuming I have the right green threads; I think I do) and see where I get to. I do have a couple of other seasonal pieces I want to work on - a very small crow in a Santa hat, and the Winter Wonderland piece from last year (which has a longer season than the Christmas stuff, of course). 

Advent Calendar, Day 10: Candy Cane

This candy cane has photographed poorly - I think it's because the main fabric is cream with gold flecks and the gold flecks don't come out well... Oh well!

Advent Calendar, Day 9: Church

My favourite bit of this one is the stained glass windows...  Chosen today because it's the Scouts Christmas Carol Service...

Abstract Purple

There has been so little sewing and other artwork going on here lately, what with one thing and another, that I don't have a lot to show - but I realised I hadn't blogged this set of abstract ATCs for a swap with a theme of torn paper in shades of purple (and the cards had to be abstract, as well).  Purple doesn't photograph well, and I didn't think to scan these instead of photographing them, which might have worked better...

Advent Calendar, Day 8: Reindeer

The nose isn't shiny, though it is cute - a tiny red pompom...

Christmassy postcards

Now that we have decorated the house for Christmas, I will show again my fabric postcard hanger - this time, with wintery and Christmassy postcards in.  They'll stay like this until early January, when I'll take out the really Christmassy things (leaving the snow scenes, snowmen, and other things which were just wintery, and adding a few other things which seem wintery).   Here are a few closeups...

Advent Calendar, Day 7: Christmas Tree

You might be able to work out from the mini-quilt I chose this morning, what we'll be doing later today...

A few more ATCs

Here are some lovely finished cards, for which I sent out the starter.  These I think are fantastic. The starter had (it's hard to see, but if you enlarge the picture you can make it out) a gold crow stamped on the background - the other ladies working on this card have turned a rather ordinary crow into a fancy bird with a great label - a really interesting finish!

I love working with letters, but sometimes they can be a bit challenging, so I don't often send them out as starters. This was an exception - and I like what's been done - good fun!

And this one is a simple, effective finish to these starters. I am almost always very pleased with what I get back from my starters - it's a good way to inspire yourself, too, as people make lots of choices you might not make yourself and use materials you wouldn't think to...

Advent Calendar, Day 6: Drum

Chosen by Alex, who obviously has a fondness for loud instruments...  I'm sure if there had been a trumpet, he'd have chosen that.

Bird is the Word

I am hosting a swap on my trading forum called Bird is the Word - all ATCs must feature one or more birds and at least one word - more is fine, too.  These are the cards that I made for the swap, but there is a huge variety coming in for the swap - some with one or two words, some with string of poetry - I will try to post a montage of them at the end of the swap, as they are all super!

Advent Calendar, Day 5: Train

Every year, someone (in my house) asks me what trains have to do with Christmas - probably because I don't really know why they are Christmassy, except that there are often trains around the bottoms of Christmas trees and whatnot.  And there's the Polar Express, I guess.   For whatever reason, there's a train among the mini-quilts, and Sarah chose to put it up today. 

Cross stitch update

I almost didn't post this, because it's very not exciting, but Wednesday Cross-stitch update is a tradition of sorts on this blog, so I decided to go ahead - this is the start of the chickadee. It's literally only the very start, but I switched to stitching down some binding rather than cross-stitching, so I didn't get much done even though I had several whole evenings (I did get a small quilt and half a larger quilt bound, though). 

Here's what it will look like when finished...

Advent Calendar, Day 4: Star

Olivia's choice today - no particular reason other than the fact that she likes it.

Background info...

An ATC swap with a difference - we are only swapping backgrounds - that is, not complete cards, just starting points. I've done this before, and you get a really varied set of different backgrounds to work on, some simple, some more elaborate. It's then fun trying to work out how to use them in future!

My two sets are on the simple side - the top one is a Greek text page, sprayed with gold and teal or purple spray ink (the teal jammed after the first card, so I switched to purple) and the bottom one is a piece of black paper with a strip of black and gold washi tape, and some gold crayon on the paper. Should be easy enough to work with!

Advent Calendar, Day 3: Santa Hat

Complete with 3D fluffy pompom, of course!  Alex chose this because he has to take a Santa Hat to Scouts tonight for some mysterious, undisclosed reason...

Cross-stitch update

Finished the section of the Faith birds - only 3 more to go - but not until after Christmas. I decided to start the chickadee next, as I'd like to get it finished before Christmas (to give as a gift) - but I will also get some seasonal stuff out soon...

Advent Calendar, Day 2: Mitten

One of the problems with photographing the little quilts in my advent calendar is that they have lots of metallic elements in the fabric, so they go a bit glarey if I use a flash. And of course, the chance of getting good natural light this time of year...  Anyway, you get the general picture, even if there's a bit of shine to it!  Mitten today, chosen by me, because I was cold this morning...

Finished heart quilt

Here it is, with the binding sewn down. Sweet, I think (but then I'm partial to brown and black, myself). 

Advent Calendar, Day 1: Wreath

I don't think I blogged my advent calendar last year (I try not to do it every year), so I'm going to share it again this year. This is a calendar I paper pieced some years ago, which we always enjoy. Every year, the days go up in slightly different order, except for a few, which always go up on certain days (like the tree picture, on the day we put the tree up). This one, the wreath, often goes up first, as I tend to put a Christmas wreath on the door on December 1st, when we put out our advent calendars (any other Christmas decorations have to wait a week or two).