West Coast Crafty

This is day 5 of relentless snowiness around here, and I’ve left the house exactly three times (a walk with Pearl and then a few buses to Crafty Wonderland on Sunday, and a walk to get coffee somewhere besides my own house during a sunbreak on Tuesday). So I’ve gotten a lot done around here… finished some freelance work, organized some craziness, baked twice in one week (which is more than I have in months, to tell you the truth), made soup from scratch instead of a can, and mended my baby quilt which is going up in Pearl’s room.

But what I’m most excited about is that I finally finished our Christmas stockings!

I cut them out last December and then between moving to the new house, my pregnancy, and work I didn’t get any further than that. And then when we set up our silver Christmas tree this month, there they were folded up in the ornament box. So I stitched them up, dragged out my giant box of felt, discovered I didn’t have any tan, re-figured my plans for Andrew’s, and embellished all three of them with vintage ribbon and baby rick-rack, our initials, and some little appliques of our favorite things. I’m hoping to embroider our names at the top, too, but that will likely have to wait for Christmas 2009.

Andrew’s has Mt. Hood looming over evergreens, the Zig Zag River, and a little field of trilliums. Pearl’s stayed a little simpler, with two lovely flowers Cathy of California made as cupcake toppers and a vintage button.

And mine has some of my favorite crafty things, along with a Cathy flower for good measure so it matches Pearl’s a bit.

This was a really simple and fun project. I used a freehand-drawn paper pattern roughly like this one from a Martha project in shape (no top fold though, and I did not turn mine seam-in) and cut two layers of felt for each big one, and re-jiggered the paper pattern to about half-size for the small one. Then I let them sit for a year (this step is optional), sewed them together about 1/2 inch in from the edge with a small folded piece of velvet ribbon poking out for a loop to hang them, trimmed the edges with pinking shears, and used Fabric Fusion glue to add the ribbon, rick-rack, and freehand-cut felt shapes right on. The nice thing with felt is that you can cut whatever you want out, put it down on your plain surface, move it around to your liking, and make it permanent or start right over. Felt is hands down my favorite craft supply, now and forever.

Speaking of felt, I’ve had some nice surprises this week: after I mentioned I was looking for Martha felt appliques, Jessica sent me two sheets of big pretty blue ones with edge-stitching I hadn’t seen at our store, and Michelle found me four more sheets of the little ones I had — hooray! I am so excited to have more cute things to decorate with and some of the whales and elephants are already up. And to say thank you, I would like to offer up a little giveaway to someone this week: a kit to make your own felt stocking. It will include cut-out stocking pieces, ribbon, rick-rack, and some extra felt to use to make your own decorations — I’ll try to tailor the package to include some favorite colors, and I’ll put it in the mail as fast as possible, and hopefully it will arrive before Christmas.

So, to enter, please leave a comment on this post telling me what your favorite craft supply is and something fun you’ve made with it. I will randomly pick one commenter on Friday, December 19, at 11 am Pacific time (just about 24 hours from now). I’ll email the winner asking for mailing address and some favorite colors, and get it out the door to you as quickly as I can (US addresses only, please) so you can work on your own stocking project. Good luck!

p.s. If someone in Portland happens to win, and has snowshoes, superpowers, or 4-wheel drive, he or she is welcome to pick it up in person, too.