Yes, the festive feeling descended upon me this week. I was hunting around in my fabric drawer and came across poor, abandoned Santa. I'd made a start on him last year...a small start, I'd ironed the fabric onto the steam a seam ready to cut out the shapes for the jolly old chap and that was all. I think that at the time, I was all Christmass-ed out having finished making the Christmas countdown from the same pattern book - 12 Days of Christmas by Art to Heart. Anyway, Santa was looking at me in a pleading fashion and I felt that having waited for 12 months he really deserved to be completed so I set to with scissors and got him all cut out. This was a rather fortuitous job to discover as Matthew and I spent a few days last week glued to the sofa with some ghastly lurgy and it was the ideal thing to do while all snuggled up and watching a film in front of the fire. Santa is just needing a little embroidery and a few buttons stitching on and then I can sandwich him together ready to hang on the wall - I have a lovely hanger ready and waiting for him.
I think the festive feeling had been approaching for a little while as I was feeling the need to stitch a Christmas stitchery and was looking with needy eyes at one of Lynette Anderson's beautiful designs which I'd seen on May Britt's blog. Having a failed to find the pattern over here I decided that by the time it arrived from Australia I would probably be too busy getting ready for Christmas to play with it and so I went looking for something else to stitch. I happened upon a pretty design on Gail Pan's blog and decided it was perfect for my needs...and it was available right now, straight away and free of charge - a lovely gift :D
I've also managed to join in with a Dear Jane festive swap and have been preparing some blocks ready for applique.
Last night I spent a bit of time printing some Inklingo shapes. I love the apple core and bought the download quite some time ago and was super eager to start stitching the shapes until I decided that I would make a mess of the cutting out! I had a nice project in mind to use these shapes for but kept on putting it off because I was convinced I'd make a mess of the cutting. Time for a trial run, I thought. I decided to make Tilde's little bag and see how things went. I thought this was a free pattern but I can't find a link to it now on the Inklingo site. I used some charm squares to print onto and the cutting went much better than I thought - I used my little 28mm rotary cutter and held it in a different manner from usual and now I have a pile of lovely apple cores to stitch into a bag :D
Next printing job is to get some more POTC hexagons printed out. I'm going away for a crafty weekend with friends next week and I've got some stitcheries to take, the little bag and hopefully a couple of POTC blocks...I won't get all of that completed of course but it's nice to have a selection to choose from!







