Christmas Crafting

No better time than the holidays to get your crafting on. Here are a few things I’ve worked on recently:

#1. Fabric Ruffle Garland

This started out because I was trying to make a backdrop for our Christmas card photo. I cut strips of the leftover fabric I had from Grumpy’s costume, left the edges raw, and put my sewing machine to work. No need for a ruffle foot (maybe one day I will actually look up what that is)… just set it to a long straight stitch and bump the tension up to 9 (as I learned here). The ruffles worked out great (SP15)… but the backdrop was a work in progress and looked something like this:

Not exactly what I was going for… so I used the fabric strips as garland instead:

#2. Merry Christmas Banner

(see above)… with this as my inspiration, I cut the letters from leftover shiny paper I had from making the Evil Queen’s mirror for our Snow White Halloween display at the pharmacy and put it together with red thread. Right now I have it hanging over the door to our basement… I need to find a better place for it, but for now it works.

#3. Ceramic Reindeer Plate

I went to a Med Group Spouses’ Club social a few weeks ago at the craft center on base. We painted Christmas plates… I chose the adorable reindeer. Definitely didn’t finish in the time allotted for the class, but I went back the next weekend to finish.

#4. Stockings

Using more leftover fabric, I made little stockings to hang up for everyone at work. These were a quick project, so they’re not made perfectly – no lining or nicely finished seams. I semi- used this tutorial, but folded the top fabric a bunch and just sewed a quick seam along the top edge to hold it together; then added gold mesh ribbon to hang them up.

(SP16)

#5. Pipe Cleaner Ornaments

These are my favorite. While I was home for a couple of days, Bethany mentioned she needed to do a craft project with her 3rd grade class the next day. Well, it was good timing… I happen to be going through a dresser that my mom brought back from my Grandma’s house that was full some of her old craft stuff and there were tons of beads. Most of them were small beads, but she also had a bunch of bigger beads and a bunch of pipe cleaners. So, naturally, I started experimenting…

I really liked the safety pin Christmas tree… but we weren’t so sure safety pins were the best idea for a bunch of 3rd graders. So, pipe cleaners won the battle. Here were a few designs we tried:

In the end, we decided on the snowflakes… they were just complicated enough to let the kids get creative without being too complicated that they weren’t going to be able to make them in 45 minutes. I got to go visit her class to help out. For the sake of time, I pre-cut the pipe cleaners – we had the kids choose whatever color pipe cleaners they wanted and I folded them together (3 pipe cleaners… centers twisted together). Then the kids choose their own beads and went to work. We finished them off by folding over the ends of the pipe cleaners so the beads wouldn’t fall off and added ribbon ties. I had to get to the airport and back to Wyoming right after we were done, but Bethany sent me this photo from their spaghetti feed that night. So adorable!